Beit Horon Stabbing Victim Is Niftar

YERUSHALAYIM
Israeli security forces secure the area near a shop where Israeli police said a stabbing attack took place by two Palestinians on two Israelis in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Beit Horon near Jerusalem January 25, 2016. Two Palestinians were shot dead after stabbing two Israeli women on Monday in the West Bank, police said, in an emerging pattern of assaults inside Jewish settlements in the occupied territory. REUTERS/Nir Elias
Israeli security forces secure the area near a supermarket where a stabbing attack took place in Beit Horon, Monday evening. (Reuters/Nir Elias)

One of the women injured in the terror attack in Beit Horon Monday night passed away in Hadassah Hospital from injuries sustained in the attack. The 23-year-old woman, Shlomit Krigman, Hy”d, was one of two people who were stabbed by Arab youths at a grocery store in the town. The second victim, a 58-year-old woman who was moderately injured and taken to Shaarei Tzedek hospital, showed significant improvement overnight Monday, hospital officials told Israel Radio Tuesday morning. The public is asked to daven for the refuah shleimah of Adina bas Tsofia, b’soch sh’ar cholei Yisrael.

Details of the attack were still being clarified Tuesday morning. Chaim Zisovich, a former Israel Radio reporter who lives in the town, said that the Arab terrorists had entered the usually quiet town via a gate that was used by Arabs who had permits to enter the town to work. It is not clear if the terrorists had permits, forged or otherwise; security officials are still checking that possibility, Zisovich said.

The terrorists made their way to the store, on a slope on which the houses also stand. Near the entrance to the store they found a woman who had just exited her car and was about to go in to do her daily shopping. They stabbed her in the neck, seriously wounding her, then sought to enter the store to attack shoppers inside.

She cried for help, and her husband, hearing her cries and the commotion outside, instinctively grabbed a shopping cart, which he used to block the terrorists from entering the store. With that, b’chashdei Shamayim, he saved his own life and the lives of others who were in the store. The terrorists tried repeatedly to push their way in, but he kept them at bay with the cart. Finally, they turned away from the entrance and stabbed another woman, injuring her moderately.

The shouts of the storekeeper, the woman who was stabbed and others brought the guard stationed about 100 yards from the site rushing, with gun drawn, and he killed the two terrorists.

Security officials fanned out through the town and asked residents to remain indoors while they searched for what they believed might be an accomplice – and in the course of their searches found three explosive devices that had apparently been planted by terrorists in and around the town.

For hours after the attack, Arabs attacked vehicles driving on Road 443, adjacent to Beit Horon. Police said that at least five Israeli vehicles were the targets of firebomb attacks as they drove by the Dor Alon gas station, across the road from Beit Horon, the Channel Four site reported.

On Tuesday afternoon, Krigman was laid to rest on Har Hamenuchos in Yerushalayim.

Krigman had been in town visiting her grandparents. Speaking at her levayah, her uncle said that she was “an amazing person who radiated light and life, whose one desire was to help others and do good,” Army Radio reported.

In a statement, the Beit Horon Local Council said that the victim “was well known and well loved,” and that the community had lost a valuable member.

The terrorists were identified by security forces as Ibrahim Alan, 22, from Beit Ur al-Tahta near Highway 443, and Hussein Abu Ghosh, 17, from the Qalandiya refugee camp.

According to instructions from Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, the villages of the two terrorists were put under closure and security forces entered their homes. Work permits of their family members were revoked and they will not be allowed entry within the Green Line. Police searched their houses and took a number of family members into custody for questioning about their knowledge of the attack.

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