Israeli police said they had arrested nine people, including family members of a Palestinian suspect who rammed his vehicle into a crowd of Israeli soldiers at a Jerusalem tourist spot the previous day, killing four people.
Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said that five of the attacker’s relatives are among those detained. They are all from the Jabel Mukaber neighborhood of east Jerusalem, where he lived.
Police yesterday used concrete slabs to block some entrances of the neighborhood, and a police officer checked each car leaving it.
Photo: AP
They said that overnight, Palestinians shot fireworks at Israeli forces at a police post near the neighborhood.
The attack came as the mood in Israel is charged following last week’s manslaughter conviction of an Israeli soldier who fatally shot a wounded Palestinian attacker.
Police called the truck attack an act of terrorism.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the attacker had been shot, and police released images showing the truck’s windshield riddled with bullet holes.
The dead included three female soldiers and one male soldier, the Israeli military confirmed. Several people were hospitalized, some with critical injuries.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the scene of the attack and said the perpetrator was “by all indications a supporter of the Islamic State.”
“This is part of the same pattern inspired by Islamic State, by ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria], that we saw first in France, then in Germany and now in Jerusalem. This is part of the same ongoing battle against this global scourge of the new terrorism,” he added.
Netanyahu has often made the comparison between local attacks against Israelis and those in the rest of the world, though the attacks in Israel are more broadly viewed as being connected to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
While the Israeli security services have described a few Palestinian attackers as having been inspired by the ideology of the Islamic State group, no direct links have been established between them and the organization.
The attack on Sunday occurred on the Armon Hanatziv Promenade, a tourist spot between East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem.
The four soldiers killed were Erez Orbach, 20, from Alon Shvut, in the West Bank; Yael Yekutiel, 20, from Givatayim, near Tel Aviv; Shir Hajaja, 22, from Maale Adumim in the West Bank; and Shira Tzur, 20, from Haifa.
Hamas, the Islamic militant group that holds sway in Gaza, praised Sunday’s attack, without taking responsibility for it.
Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas official, described it as a “courageous and heroic operation.”
In Gaza City, people were handing out sweets to passers-by in celebration.
Nickolay Mladenov, UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, condemned the attack in a statement.
“It is reprehensible that some choose to glorify such acts, which undermine the possibility of a peaceful future for both Palestinians and Israelis,” he said. “There is nothing heroic in such actions.”
The Palestinian official news agency WAFA identified the driver of the truck as Fadi Ahmad al-Qunbar, 28, a resident of East Jerusalem.
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