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Arabs shoot hundreds of rounds at Israeli city, still at large

So far, only one suspect has been taken into custody.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Israel Police have arrested one man of three who recently shot hundreds of bullets at the Galilee town of Rosh Pina after video surfaced of the serious incident, Channel 12 reported Wednesday.

The clip shows one man crouching on a roof at night in the nearby Bedouin town of Tuba-Zangariyya and firing dozens of bullets in just a few seconds from an M-16 machine gun toward the lights of Jewish residences. Another man is seen standing and shooting several single shots from another weapon.

The authorities have already filed an indictment against the single suspect they have in hand for being an accomplice in the shooting. He allegedly kept the machine gun in a warehouse belonging to his grandmother in the village, said the report.

Investigations are ongoing to locate the other men who carried out the shooting.

While the maximum range of an M-16 is 3000 yards (2.7 km) and Rosh Pina is some six kilometers away, residents from the town and other villages in the area have recently been complaining about bullets randomly hitting their backyards and causing property damage. They say it’s only by a miracle that no one has been injured or killed yet in these incidents.

In April, almost 8,000 bullets for M-16 and Tavor rifles that had been stolen from army bases were found in the Bedouin town during a police raid. The authorities believe that they were stockpiled by criminal organizations in the area.

Although many of the approximately 6,500 residents are normative citizens, serving in the IDF and abiding by the law, Tuba-Zangariyya has been known for the last few years as a gang-infested locale where violence abounded. In 2019, Brig. Gen. (res.) Zvika Fogel, who a decade earlier had been put in charge there for three years due to the local inability to manage affairs, called it “one large weapons depot” in a Ynet interview.

Other residents told the reporter that “the mafia is running free” but that nobody would cooperate with the police out of fear for their lives.

In January, former public security minister Amir Ohana announced that a new police station would be established in Tuba-Zangariyya as part of the campaign to reduce crime in the Arab sector.