Soldier Killed in Samaria Car Ramming Attack

One IDF soldier was killed and another lightly wounded when a Palestinian driver drove into a crowded bus stop outside the town of Ofra, north of Jerusalem, Thursday.  The attacker, identified by Palestinian media as 21-year-old Malek Ahmed Mousa Hamed, was neutralized and lightly wounded, and taken into custody by IDF forces at the scene. The wounded soldier was evacuated to Hadassah University Medical Center at Mount Scopus.

Elhai Teharlev, a resident of Talmon, in the Binyamin region of Samaria, will be laid to rest this evening at the Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem.

The incident occurred shortly after 10:00 in the morning, when Hamed plowed his car into a crowded bus stop along Route 60. In the aftermath of the attack, Magen David Adom paramedic Ilan Klein told TPS, “this was a very bad incident. [When I arrived, I found] a young man, about 20 years old, lying unconscious on the ground, with no pulse and badly wounded. We tried to resuscitate him but we had no choice but to declare him dead.

“Nearby, another man, also about 20 years old, was lying , wounded in the legs but conscious. Together with IDF medics, we administered first aid and evacuated him to Jerusalem,” Klein said.

Another first responder, United Hatzalah EMT Nachum Bienenfeld added that emergency teams found the Palestinian vehicle overturned in a ditch near the bus stop.

“The Palestinian vehicle had come up on the sidewalk, and rammed into a  group of soldiers who were standing near the bus stop,” Bienenfeld said. “The vehicle had continued and landed in a ditch by the side of the road. Security poles that had been set up near the bus stop due to a previous ramming attack that  had taken place at that bus stop prevented injury to other civilians who were standing at the bus stop.”

Hamas praised the attack, calling it a “response to Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people and a direct continuation of its heroism in the al-Quds Intifada.” The organization was using a common term to refer to the escalation in violence that began in October 2015.