Two Israelis seriously wounded in West Bank shooting attack https://t.co/496HyFpejO Photo: Tazpit/ Archive
Israelis Eitam and Naama Henkin were killed Thursday night while driving on a road near the northern West Bank city of Nablus. Their four children, sitting in the back seat, were lightly injured according to medics who treated the family on the scene.
Israel's Channel Ten News reported that the children, aged nine, seven, four, and four months, were being treated for shock on the scene.
"It was a very difficult sight," said MDA paramedic Boaz Malka told Ynet News. "We saw a car in the middle of the road with a man in his thirties next to it with wounds to his upper body, and a woman in her thirties inside the car also seriously wounded in her upper body. They were without signs of life, and unfortunately we had to declare them dead at the scene."
An Israeli army spokesperson said officers were searching the area for the suspect, but that witnesses said that a passing car opened fire on the family.
The armed wing of Hamas released a statement that celebrated the shooting, but stopped short of claiming responsibility.
"We praise the heroic operation that fighters in the West Bank carried out and we consider it a true response to the occupier's crime," the movement's armed wing said in a statement which called for more attacks.
Tensions have flared in recent weeks surrounding a Jerusalem site known by Muslims as the Al Aqsa Mosque and known by Jews as the Temple Mount. Clashes have occurred regularly in and around the site, which both Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mentioned in speeches to the U.N. General Assembly this week.