Israeli forces have arrested two Palestinians who killed three people in a stabbing attack last week and fled the scene near Tel Aviv.
“The two terrorists who murdered three Israeli civilians in the deadly attack in the city of Elad have been caught,” the police, army and domestic security agency said in a joint statement on Sunday following a huge manhunt.
The two Palestinians, identified as Asad Yussef al-Rifai, 19, and Subhi Imad Sbeihat, 20, were caught near a quarry not far from Elad by special force units using helicopters and other means, the statement added.
The stabbings on Thursday occurred on what Israel celebrates as its Independence Day.
For Palestinians, the anniversary of Israel’s 1948 declaration of independence marks the Nakba, or catastrophe, when at least 750,000 people were violently expelled from their homes and villages in historic Palestine.
Elad, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish town, is built on the remains of the Palestinian village al-Muzayriyah, which was ethnically cleansed and destroyed in July 1948.
According to Israeli forces, al-Rifai and Sbeihat wounded four others with a knife and an axe before bolting.
Surge in tensions
The stabbing was the latest in a series of deadly assaults deep inside the country in recent weeks. It came as Israeli-Palestinian tensions were already heightened by violence and repeated incursions by Israeli forces at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
Source: aljazeera.com
