Second Shooting in Shomron Lightly Wounds IDF Soldier

By Hamodia Staff

YERUSHALAYIM – An IDF soldier was shot and lightly wounded near Shechem on Sunday evening, the second such incident of the day, after a terror attack in the morning near Itamar in the Shomron, according to media reports.

The shooting, not far from the earlier one, occurred as a demonstration by Israelis against terrorist violence in the area was breaking up. The soldier who was hit was serving in a unit assigned to protect the demonstrators.

According to the Rescuers Without Border emergency service, the soldier was struck in the leg by gunfire on a road between Itamar and the military’s Shomron regional brigade base.

Shomron regional council chairman Yossi Dagan and several others, including children, took cover behind vehicles as shots rang, a scene captured on video.

The IDF said troops returned fire at the source of the gunfire, and had launched a manhunt for the gunmen.

An armed Palestinian faction calling itself Lion’s Den claimed responsibility for both shootings in separate statements.

The group, reportedly based in Shechem, surfaced in recent months.. Some of its members apparently previously operated with the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

It has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks in the Shomron in recent weeks.

Earlier, on Sunday morning, terrorist fire hit a bus and a car traveling on the road, lightly wounding the driver of the car. The car was a taxi and the wounded driver was evacuated to the IDF’s Samaria Regional Brigade base, and from there to a hospital.

The driver, a father of six, the youngest of whom are twins of eighteen months, described how the bus driver slowed down to protect him. “I left Elon Moreh early this morning, the same as I do every other weekday on my way to pick up students from [nearby] Tapuach, and as I was driving down the slope, passing the monument erected in memory of the Henkin family, I heard a sound from the road.

“I assumed I’d gotten a puncture, but a moment later I realized they were shooting at me. I felt a scratch on my shoulder from a bullet, I felt something, but I wasn’t sure if it had entered my body. I continued driving and stepped down on the gas.”

The driver added that the bus driver likely spared him from worse injury by slowing down to cover him. He also noted that in the place where the shooting occurred there are usually soldiers stationed, but on Sunday morning, for some reason, they were absent.

The IDF has launched a search in the Shechem area for those responsible for the attack. The incident is the latest in a string of recent security incidents in Yehudah and Shomron.

On Motzoei Shabbos, a terrorist opened fire at an IDF unit operating in Shomron, while a second shooting targeted Beit El, also in Shomron.