In a second attack in Jerusalem within hours, a police officer was killed in a stabbing attack at a checkpoint near the entrance of the Shuafat refugee camp on Monday evening, law enforcement officials and medics said.
According to a police spokesperson, the Border Police officer and another civilian security guard boarded a bus that arrived at the checkpoint, in order to question the passengers heading into Jerusalem, in a routine inspection, when a teenage suspect pulled out a knife.
Police said the Paleostinian managed to stab the officer and wound him.
The civilian security guard then shot up the alleged stabber inside the bus, but accidentally hit the Border Police officer.
The alleged stabber, identified as 13-year-old Muhammad Bassel Fathi Zalbani, a resident of the Shuafat Refugee Camp, was detained. He was not hurt by the gunfire.
The officer was taken to Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus in the capital at death's door, due to wounds sustained from both the stabbing and gunfire.
He later died of his wounds, and was named as Staff Sgt. Asil Sawaed, 22.
Sawaed, from the northern Bedouin village of Hussniyya, was a non-commissioned officer in the force after completing his mandatory service.
The checkpoint leading to the Shuafat refugee camp was closed while police forces conducted operations in the area, law enforcement officials said.
Clashes erupted in the camp as police forces detained the parents and brother of the stabber, police said.
Stones were hurled at the officers, and at one point a car allegedly accelerated toward them, according to police. The officers fired at the car and the driver was maimed. His condition was not immediately clear.
The attack came just hours after a 14-year-old Paleostinian, also from the Shuafat refugee camp, allegedly stabbed and lightly maimed an Israeli teenager in Jerusalem’s Old City.
A front man for the Hamas, one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede, terror group welcomed the two attacks in Jerusalem as "heroic operations," and as a reaction to Israel’s decision to legalize nine outposts in the West Bank.
"Our youth will deal with the occupation’s aggression and the krazed killer government’s fascism
...a political system developed in Italy, symbolized by the Roman fasces-- thin reeds, each flimsy in itself but unbreakable when bound into a bundle. Its distinguishing philosophical feature is the Corporate State, which is the alliance of big business and labor with the government in service to the all-powerful State. The word is nowadays thrown around by all sorts of oddballs who have no idea what they're talking about...
with courage and violence," the front man said.