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Two killed at bus stop in Givat Assaf

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Two Israelis were killed and two others were seriously wounded this morning at a bus stop in Givat Assaf in the West Bank, near Ramallah. The dead and wounded were said to be in their 20s. Witnesses reported a man disembarked from a vehicle on Route 60, opened fire and fled the scene. Of the wounded, one male is being treated at Hadassah and a second female is being treated at Jerusalem’s Shaarei Zedek medical centre. The attack occurred near the site of Sunday’s drive-by shooting in which seven Israelis were hurt.

Last night an Israeli police counter-terrorism unit killed a Palestinian suspected of carrying out a shooting attack on Sunday.

Palestinian eyewitnesses said Israeli forces shot at a taxi in Ramallah carrying Salah Barghouti, who is understood to be the leader of the cell that carried out the shooting in Ofra on Sunday. He later died of his wounds at Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem. Hamas issued a statement saying Barghouti was a Hamas operative who carried out what it called “the heroic operation in Ofra”. The Israeli operation was part of an ongoing manhunt for Sunday’s attackers in which Shira Ish-Ran, seven months pregnant, her husband and five others were injured at a bus stop outside the settlement of Ofra in the West Bank.

Yesterday’s operation came hours after Ish-Ran’s baby, who was born at 30 weeks by Caesarean on Sunday, died. The baby, named Amiad Yisrael, was buried last night on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

Salah Barghouti is the son of Hamas leader Omar Barghouti, who was sentenced to life in prison after murdering bus driver Mordechai Yakuel in 1978. He was subsequently released in 1985 in the Jibril deal and has since been placed under administrative detention a number of times.

In a separate operation last night, Israeli security forces killed Ashraf Naalwe, who was suspected of carrying out a terrorist attack at the Barkan industrial zone two months ago. Naalwe had been on the run for since the attack and was caught hiding in a building in the Askar refugee camp near Nablus. He was armed with a Carl Gustav rifle and died after a short exchange of fire with Israeli special forces.

A Palestinian man stabbed two policemen yesterday near the Damascus Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem. They sustained moderate and light injuries. Another policemen on the scene killed the assailant.