Terrorists fire on industrial park in northern Samaria

(JNS) — Palestinian terrorists fired on the Shahak Industrial Park in northern Samaria on Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces said.

The IDF reported no casualties but said that the attack had caused material damage.

The vehicle used in the attack was located in Palestinian Authority territory and contained ammunition and spent cartridges. Israeli forces were searching the area for the suspected shooters.

“The shooting joins the dozens of shooting incidents over the past year which occurred in the bloc of settlements in northern Samaria, and the attempts to launch rockets toward the towns,” said Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan.

“The situation in northern Samaria cannot continue this way,” Dagan added.

“I demand that the prime minister, defense minister and all of the government ministers renew the ‘Bayit Vagan’ operation [the IDF’s 48-hour counterterror operation in Jenin in July] and eliminate the Palestinian Authority’s terror infrastructure. We will not be sitting ducks in a firing range,” he said.

“We will not accept a situation in which a person leaves for work in the morning and does not know if he will return since he is exposed to gunfire from terrorists due to the fact that we have become the Wild West,” Dagan said.

The shooting came amid an ongoing wave of Palestinian terrorism throughout Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem.

Shortly after midnight on Thursday, suspected Palestinian terrorists hurled rocks at Israeli vehicles on the Route 60 highway in the area of Al-Lubban ash-Sharqiya near Ramallah, Rescuers Without Borders (Hatzalah Judea and Samaria) reported.

At least one car was hit, slightly injuring two people. The driver managed to keep driving until he reached the Jewish community of Eli. The two victims did not need medical treatment, said Hatzalah.

Meanwhile, local media reported on Wednesday about an attempted lynching that took place in the northeastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya on Saturday.

According to Channel 14, a haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, Jewish couple from the Etzion bloc in Judea made a wrong turn into the Arab-majority area while on their way to the delivery room at Hadassah Medical Center at Mount Scopus.

“I soon realized that I did not know how to get out of the area, so I opened the window to ask, ‘How do I get to Mount Scopus from here?’ And when I opened the window, immediately a bottle was thrown at me,” the father related.

The Arab mob continued to bombard their car with rocks, firecrackers and bottles, and a teenager punched the husband as he tried to pull him out of the vehicle. “I have no doubt that it was clear to them that my wife was in labor. … And yet, they brutally attacked,” he said.

Eventually, the man was able to press the gas, escape and reach the hospital, where his wife gave birth to a healthy baby boy. The new father was taken to the emergency room, Channel 14 reported.