Israeli forces captured on Sunday May 8, after more than 48 hours of an extensive manhunt, two Palestinians suspected of having perpetrated Thursday in Elad, in central Israel, an attack which cost the life of three Israelis.

“The two terrorists who murdered three Israeli civilians during the attack in the town of Elad have been arrested,” the police, army and Shin Beth, the internal security service, said in a joint statement.

They were found near the city of Elad, located near the metropolis of Tel Aviv.

On Thursday, the day of celebrations for the 74th anniversary of the creation of the State of Israel, two assailants killed three Israelis and injured four others in Elad, a locality where some of the 50,000 inhabitants are ultra-Orthodox Jews.

According to witnesses, the assailants had jumped out of a car and started attacking passers-by with axes before fleeing in the same vehicle.

It was the sixth attack targeting Israelis since March 22 in Israel and the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by the Israeli army since 1967.

Manhunt

After the attack, the Israeli police launched a manhunt by distributing the photos and names of two Palestinians suspected of having committed it, aged 19 and 20 and from the village of Roummaneh in the Jenin region. , in the West Bank.

Israel had also extended until Sunday the closure of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to "prevent the flight of terrorists" to these Palestinian territories.

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Palestinian President and leader of the secular Fatah movement, Mahmoud Abbas, based in the West Bank, condemned the "killing of Israeli civilians".

But the Palestinian Islamist movements of Hamas and Islamic Jihad welcomed on their side a "heroic" attack, without claiming it.

According to them, it was carried out in response to the violence in East Jerusalem, the Palestinian sector of the Holy City occupied by Israel since 1967.

"The operation (in Elad) demonstrates our people's anger at the occupation's attacks on holy sites. The storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque cannot go unpunished," Hamas warned. controls Gaza, an overcrowded Palestinian enclave that has been under an Israeli blockade for more than 15 years.

"The desecration by the occupying forces and Al-Aqsa settler gangs has crossed all red lines," added Islamic Jihad.

Clashes in Jerusalem

In recent weeks, clashes between Israeli police and Palestinians have injured some 300 people, mostly on the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem.

This site, the third place of Islam, houses the Al-Aqsa mosque.

Thursday, after the return of Jewish worshipers to the esplanade, also considered the holiest place in Judaism under its name of Temple Mount, clashes broke out between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli police.

Under an unspoken status quo, non-Muslims can go to the esplanade but not pray there.

A growing number of Jews are going there, and the fact that some of them pray surreptitiously there raises fears that this status quo will be challenged among many Muslims, even if Israel has repeatedly wanted to maintain it.

In total, since March 22, 18 people have been killed in anti-Israeli attacks in Israel and the West Bank, carried out by Israeli Arabs and Palestinians.

In the wake of the first attacks, Israeli forces carried out operations in the West Bank, particularly in the Jenin region where the attackers came from.

Twenty-seven Palestinians, including attackers, were killed.

With AFP

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