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TEL AVIV — At least one woman has died and 18 injured in a ramming and stabbing attack in the Israeli city of Ra’anana, to the north of Tel Aviv, on Monday.
Israeli police said two Palestinian suspects from the occupied West Bank were arrested in connection with Monday’s attacks.
Israeli media named the two suspects as Ahmed Zidat, 25, and Mahmoud Zidad, 44, both residents of the southern occupied West Bank town of Bani Naim, close to Hebron.
In an earlier statement, police said two suspects stole vehicles and ran over a number of residents in different locations.
Medical officials from Meir Hospital announced that a critically injured woman in her 70s who had been taken to the medical center following the attack had succumbed to her wounds.
The incident was described as a “suspected terrorist ramming attack” where the suspect changed vehicles three times. According to Israeli police, the suspect arrested was a Palestinian man from the West Bank city of Hebron, as reported by The Times of Israel.
A second person, a man who’s believed to be a relative of the first suspect, was also arrested. The two, according to the Israeli newspaper, were working in the industrial zone in Ra’anana and were in Israel illegally.
At least 18 other people were being treated for injuries, including two seriously, medics from the Magen David Adom emergency service said.
Central district police chief Avi Biton told reporters that the two “went out together and in parallel, to two different locations, took two cars and launched a series of rammings”.
Israeli TV showed scattered personal items on a pavement and said several children were among the injured.
A family member of the suspects confirmed the two are related and they used to work in Israel before their work permits were revoked. Israeli authorities banned all Palestinian workers from the occupied West Bank from entering the country after the October 7 attack.
The pair have since managed to re-enter Israel irregularly, the relative said.
“They now expect their houses to be demolished, a routine practice here in the occupied West Bank,” said Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel-Hamid. “But they also expect some form of collective punishment such as the whole village being sealed off and isolated for some time,” she added.
Israeli police are not ruling out the involvement of other suspects in the Monday attack. — Agencies
