BICOM

Three Israeli soldiers were wounded yesterday evening, one seriously, after a Palestinian man rammed a car into a West Bank roadblock they were manning.

The Palestinian assailant is reported have to have sped up as he approached the Ein Arik roadblock, near the West Bank settlement of Dolev, northwest of Ramallah, ploughing into the soldiers on duty there. Three were injured, one seriously, who was evacuated by helicopter and said to be in a life-threatening condition. The other two were transported by ambulance to hospitals in Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the attacker, later named as 36-year-old Ahmed Riyad Shehada, 36, from Beitunia in the West Bank, was shot and killed at the scene by troops as the attack unfolded.

Shehada’s body was returned to his family last night, in what appeared to be a reversal of recent Israeli policy to withhold the bodies of terrorists killed, for fear that their funerals will become mass protests and a focal point for further violence.

Yesterday’s vehicle attack comes just a day after a 60-year-old Israeli man was stabbed and moderately wounded by an 18-year-old Palestinian at the Lions’ Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City. Knife and vehicle attacks, especially in Jerusalem and the West Bank, had been near-daily occurrences during the wave of violence, which has killed at least 31 Israelis since October. However, the violence has subsided during the past several weeks, despite a bus bomb in Jerusalem which wounded 21 people last month.

Meanwhile, a 16-year-old Palestinian was yesterday convicted of the murder of mother-of-six Dafna Meir in her home in the West Bank settlement of Otniel in January. The youth, from a nearby village repeatedly stabbed Meir in front of her children, before fleeing the scene as she lay dying. The murderer, whose name remains under a gag order, was arrested two days after the attack.