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Israel arrests Palestinian suspects in fatal West Bank shooting attack

Xinhua, July 15, 2015 Adjust font size:

Israeli security forces said on Wednesday they arrested a Palestinian from the West Bank who are suspected of carrying out a fatal shooting attack last month, which killed an Israeli and wounded another.

On June 19, Abu Shahin allegedly flagged down two Israelis on a gravel road near the Jewish settlement of Dolev. As they approached, he shot at them at close range, fatally injuring Danny Gonen and lightly wounding his friend. The two were residents of Lod, a town near Tel Aviv, well within the "green line" border, but went to visit the Ein Buvin natural spring in the occupied West Bank.

A military spokesperson said in a statement that the 30-year-old suspect, Muhammad Abu Shahin, is a resident of the Qalandiya refugee camp, south of Ramallah, and an activist with the Tanzim, a militant faction of the Fatah movement.

A separate statement by the Israeli Shin Bet security service said that Abu Shahin was arrested along with five other suspects from Qalandiya, who "admitted during interrogations" of carrying out or assisting in the attack.

They were apprehended amidst a "wave of arrests" carried out in the West Bank by Shin Bet and the army following the attack, according to Shin Bet.

Shahin, incarcerated in Israeli jails between 2006 and 2008 for masterminding stabbing and shooting attacks against Israelis, also confessed to six additional attacks over the past year, including a shooting which injured an Israeli soldier in A-Ram, near Jerusalem, in November 2014. Endit