Arab terrorists attacked the Jewish community of Yitzhar in northern Samaria late Friday afternoon as the Sabbath was about to begin, lightly wounding three members of the first-response team before fleeing to a nearby Arab village. It was the third attack on a town in Judea and Samaria in the past three weeks.
Residents of a Yitzhar neighborhood noticed about 10 Arabs entering Yitzhar’s vineyards, immediately south of the community. They alerted the first-response team, which was targeted with gunfire when it confronted the terrorists.
The team returned fire, and when soldiers arrived on the scene, the terrorists fled. Soldiers chased two of the terrorists to the nearby village of Orif, where residents stoned the troops.
The wounded members of the first-response team were treated on the scene.
Yigal Amitai, spokesman for Yitzhar, said the terrorists may have planned an ambush in order to trap the first response team. “The atmosphere of terror is the fruit of the security vacuum,” he added.
The attempted attack on Friday was the third on a Jewish community in Judea and Samaria this month. An axe-wielding terrorist killed a young boy in the Bat Ayin community in western Gush Etzion three weeks ago, and one week later, a terrorist from the Hevron area infiltrated the adjacent Jewish town of Beit Haggai. The local first response team killed him before he could carry out an attack with a knife he was carrying.