Thousands of police fanned out across northern Israel and Jerusalem yesterday to prevent possible rioting as a grieving and angry Arab community prepared to bury four Israeli Arabs gunned down by a Jewish soldier opposed to Israel's impending pullout from the Gaza Strip.
The soldier, 19-year-old Eden Natan-Zada, boarded a bus in this Arab town Thursday and opened fire, killing the driver and three passengers, and wounding 13. A mob of enraged residents beat him to death after the shooting, and prevented police from removing his body from the bus for hours.
For months, Israeli security has been warning that as the mid-August pullout from Gaza and four small northern West Bank settlements nears, desperate extremists might try to sabotage it by attacking Arabs and diverting forces.
Natan-Zada's father said he deserted his army unit in protest after he was ordered to help prepare for the pullout and moved to Tapuah, an extremist West Bank settlement.
The funerals for the four dead -- including two sisters in their 20s -- are to be held later yesterday. Natan-Zada is also to be buried yesterday in a civilian service, after the Ministry of Defense overturned the army's decision to accord him a military funeral without honors, the military said.
The Haaretz newspaper cited witnesses as saying Natan-Zada boarded the bus bound for Shfaram, a city of 35,000 Muslims, Christians and Druze, in the northern city of Haifa. He wore the skullcap, beard and sidelocks of an ultra-Orthodox Jew, and an orange ribbon symbolizing opposition to the withdrawal was attached to a pocket, the newspaper said.
When the bus entered a Shfaram neighborhood, Natan-Zada opened fire on the driver, killing him instantly, witnesses said.
The bus rolled on for 20m, until it hit a parked car and ground to a halt, Haaretz said. Natan-Zada continued shooting inside the bus, which was carrying about 20 passengers, emptying an entire magazine. When he tried loading a new magazine, one of the passengers jumped him.
Ahkim Janhwi told Israel Radio he wrestled the attacker to the ground and disarmed him -- only to be attacked by a confused crowd who thought he was the gunman.
When the gunfire erupted, "I immediately lay down between the seats," Janhwi said. "I thought about everybody who is important to me and who I'm important to, and I thought I was a goner. I closed my eyes and heard his footsteps getting closer to me.
"There was a woman sitting nearby who began screaming and begged him not to do anything to her, and at that moment I jumped on him and grabbed his gun," Janhwi said. "He shot about three bullets, and I pulled him back. We rolled back to the back of the bus and I held him down. Then I called on people through the window to help me."
People who boarded the bus beat Natan-Zada to death, media said. Television stations reported Thursday that he was attacked with iron bars and stones.
For hours, until the crowd was subdued, the gunman's body lay on the floor of the bus, his head covered with a black plastic bag. His shirtless upper torso was heavily bruised and bloodied.
The windows of the bus were shattered by bullets and by rocks the mob threw at the gunman. Blood stained bus seats, and rocks covered the vehicle's floor.
Lighted candles marked the site of the attack yesterday morning.
Police were looking for the people who killed the soldier, Army Radio said.
Police commissioner Moshe Karadi said forces had been diverted to deal with an anti-pullout demonstration in Israel's south, leaving the north -- where most of Israel's Arab population lives -- short-handed.
He cautioned that the attack could trigger additional violence. In Jerusalem, ahead of Muslim Sabbath prayers yesterday, police raised their alert to the highest level and assigned SWAT teams and cavalry to the area, in anticipation of possible rioting in the Old City.
WAKE-UP CALL: Firms in the private sector were not taking basic precautions, despite the cyberthreats from China and Russia, a US cybersecurity official said A ninth US telecom firm has been confirmed to have been hacked as part of a sprawling Chinese espionage campaign that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and telephone conversations of an unknown number of Americans, a top White House official said on Friday. Officials from the administration of US President Joe Biden this month said that at least eight telecommunications companies, as well as dozens of nations, had been affected by the Chinese hacking blitz known as Salt Typhoon. US Deputy National Security Adviser for Cyber and Emerging Technologies Anne Neuberger on Friday told reporters that a ninth victim
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
A shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast killed a tourist and injured another, authorities said on Sunday, with an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs source identifying both as Italian nationals. “Two foreigners were attacked by a shark in the northern Marsa Alam area, which led to the injury of one and the death of the other,” the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said in a statement. A source at the Italian foreign ministry said that the man killed was a 48-year-old resident of Rome. The injured man was 69 years old. They were both taken to hospital in Port Ghalib, about 50km north
MISSING: Prosecutors urged the company to move workers out of poor living conditions to hotels, but residents said many workers had already left the town Brazil has stopped issuing temporary work visas for BYD, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday, in the wake of accusations that some workers at a site owned by the Chinese electric vehicle producer had been victims of human trafficking. The announcement came days after labor authorities said they found 163 Chinese workers who had been brought to Brazil irregularly in “slavery-like” conditions at the BYD factory construction site in the northeastern state of Bahia. The workers were employed by contractor Jinjiang Group, which has denied any wrongdoing. Later, the authorities also said the workers were victims of human trafficking,
RSS