IDF observers spot suspicious movement near settlement, troops intercept terrorist squad armed with firebombs.
By Paul Shindman, World Israel News
A group of four Palestinian terrorists armed with molotov cocktails was intercepted moving towards a Jewish community in Samaria, the IDF announced Monday.
The four were spotted Monday evening just after the end of Yom Kippur by army observers near the town of Elon Moreh, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Jerusalem, using remote video cameras. A squad of soldiers sent to intercept the Palestinians apprehended the four after firing into the air, the IDF Spokesperson’s office said in a statement.
The suspects were arrested with prepared gasoline firebombs in their possession.
Last month the General Security Service, Israel’s equivalent of the FBI, reported an increase in terrorist incidents in Judea and Samaria over the previous month, including 85 firebomb attacks by Palestinians using molotov cocktails – glass bottles filled with gasoline into which a rag is stuffed as a wick. The bottle is then thrown and explodes in a fireball when it hits.
Over the years, scores of people have been killed or seriously injured with horrific burns by firebomb attacks on vehicles.
In August, the GSS reported one Israeli was killed and three injured in three different stabbing attacks by Palestinians. Rabbi Shai Ohayon, 39 and a father of four young children, was stabbed to death August 27 by a Palestinian while walking home in the city of Kfar Saba.
Three Israelis were wounded in stone throwing attacks in Judea and Samaria. In addition to 85 firebomb attacks and the stabbings, there were six incidents of pipe-bombs, seven incidents involving small arms fire by Palestinians, and eight incidents of arson.
In the same month, Palestinian terrorists in Gaza fired 25 rockets at Israel. The GSS numbers do not include hundreds of incendiary balloons launched from Gaza that are triggered to land in Israel, where they caused scores of brush and forest fires.
The numbers also do not include hundreds of rock-throwing incidents on the roads and highways of Judea and Samaria.