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| Middle East |
| 'Human shield' dies as Hamas man is killed by troops |
| 2002-08-15 |
| Nasser Jerar, who lost his legs and an arm a year ago during preparations of a terrorist attack, was one of the most wanted men on the IDF's suspect list as the orchestrator of many Hamas attacks; most recently, he was the mastermind behind a plot to bring down a multi-story building in Tel Aviv. A true Bad Guy, at least what was left of him... Shin Bet information led the counter-terror unit to the village of Tubas in the pre-dawn hours yesterday, where Jerar was believed hiding in a building complex. The force surrounded the complex and called out with megaphones for Jerar to give himself up. When there was no response, the force took neighbor Nidal Abu Muhsein, the 19-year-old nephew of a B'Tselem field investigator, and had him go door-to-door calling on the residents to leave. They took a nephew of a guy who works as a hand-wringer for a subversive "human rights" organization. That was bright. The youth knocked on several doors, calling on people to leave. They all did, but not in the case of one house. When Muhsein knocked on that door, said the IDF, a burst of bullets killed him. Tubas residents said the bullets did not come from inside the house. Do the Tubas residents mean the IDF waxed him themselves? Why would they do that? They didn't like him? In any case, troops opened fire, but unsure whether Jerar had been killed, and suspecting he may have booby-trapped the house, the army called in a bulldozer, which proceeded to knock down the house on Jerar. "Ding-dong, the witch is dead...!" Jerar, 44, was born in Wadi Burkin, in the northern West Bank, and was one of the Hamas military commanders in the Nablus and Jenin area, orchestrating many terrorist attacks carried out inside Israel over the past few years. Until a year ago, he took part in many of those attacks, but in May 2001, on his way to ambush IDF forces, one of the bombs he had prepared blew up, taking his legs and an arm. Confined to a wheelchair, he continued playing a leading role in Hamas military activities in the Jenin area, becoming commander of the Hamas cells of the northern West Bank. "Most people didn't expect Jerar to actually die. Rather, they expected him to gradually erode, one piece being blown off at a time, until there was nothing left." |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |