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Northern Israel on alert after bus attack

Special to World Tribune.com
MIDDLE EAST NEWSLINE
Friday, August 5, 2005

TEL AVIV — Israeli authorities have been placed on alert in wake of the killing of four people by an army deserter.

Officials said police and security forces were placed on alert in northern Israel in wake of a bus attack by an Israeli soldier, later lynched by a mob. Those killed were members of Israel's Druse community.

A man identified as a Jewish army deserter entered a bus in the Arab town of Shfaram on Thursday and opened fire. At least four were people were killed and 16 injured in what Prime Minister Ariel Sharon deemed a terrorist attack.

"This was a reprehensible act by a bloodthirsty Jewish terrorist who sought to attack innocent Israeli citizens," Sharon said. "This terrorist event was a deliberate attempt to harm the fabric of relations among all Israeli citizens."

A crowd of passersby rushed the bus and killed the gunman, who by then had been handcuffed by police. The dead attacker was later identified as Eden Zaada, a 19-year-old resident of an Israeli community in the northern West Bank. Zaada's parents said their son did not want to serve in the army and sought to turn in his weapon to Israeli police last month. They said police refused to accept his son's weapon.

"The Chief of Staff ordered that the circumstances surrounding and leading to the possession of an IDF [Israel Defense Forces] weapon by the soldier, who had defected and was of a problematic background, be investigated," a military statement said.

The military plans to collect weapons of reservists who live in the 25 Israeli communities slated for evacuation later this month. Officials said residents were cooperating and have so far handed in such weapons as army-issued machine guns, mortars and grenade launchers.

Officials said Zaada was a member of the outlawed Israeli movement Kach, which advocates the expulsion of Arabs from Israel. They said Zaada went missing about a month ago, apparently to avoid participating in the military operation to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank.

Police were placed on alert throughout the north to prepare for rioting in Druse and Arab towns in the Galilee. Israeli Arab parliamentarians said the attack marked an attempt to scuttle the withdrawal operation.

"We are witnessing attempts by extreme right-wing people, terrorists, who want to set the region ablaze," parliamentarian Mohammed Barakeh said.


Copyright © 2005 East West Services, Inc.

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