The terrorist who was killed while carrying out an attack in Jerusalem’s Old City carried out a murder last month of a Jewish man, a new Israeli-Arab terror group says.
The Galilee-based Israeli-Arab terror group, which calls itself the Arab-Israeli Galilee Liberation Organization (GLO), told the PA-based Maan News Agency that Ahmad Khatib, who was shot to death after stealing an Israeli security guards gun and shooting wildly in the Old City’s Christian Quarter two weeks ago, had already carried out another attack.
The group said that Khatib murdered 68-year-old Upper Nazareth resident Michael Ronkin outside his home just over two weeks ago. Ronkin was found covered with stab wounds by medics, but the investigation and circumstances of his death were the subject of a gag-order prohibiting publication until now.
Ronkin's family was sure that it was a terrorist attack from the day he died.
The GLO also claimed responsibility for the killing of IDF soldier Oleg Shaichat in July, 2003.
Bedouin Intifada in the Negev Threatened
An Israeli-Arab Bedouin child was killed during a gun fight between IDF troops and Islamic Jihad terrorists, including the boy's half-brother, in Tul Karem. His mother, a divorced PA Arab, lives in the town of Rahat, in the Negev, where she remarried an Israeli-Arab. Israeli-Arabs can travel freely to all part of Israel and PA-controlled areas and the boy and his mother were visiting her family.
The IDF said that it is unclear whether the child, Mahmoud al-Karnawi, was killed by IDF fire or by that of local terrorists. Al-Karnawi and his terrorist half-brother were inside the house from which Arabs opened fire on the soldiers. They returned fire and a lengthy gun battle ensued, in which a border police officer was shot and wounded lightly.
Al-Karnawi’s family claims the troops shot the boy dead after he had been wounded already. The news of the boy’s death caused an uproar in his home town of Rahat, near Be’er Sheva. “If the rumors about Mahmoud's death turn out to be true, it might inflame the public," Rahat Mayor Talal al-Karnawi declared Saturday.
Shortly after the Khatib attack two weeks ago, his family claimed that their son had not swiped the pistol of a security guard, but was simply killed for no reason. A video of Khatib grabbing the gun, released shortly thereafter, had the family claiming it was a forgery.