EFL:Israeli forces disguised as vegetable vendors captured a senior Hamas operative who had been on the run for eight years, while others caught a 14-year-old boy whom militants tried to push into becoming a suicide bomber, the army said Wednesday. Israel's new arrest raids across the West Bank came as part of a recent crackdown on militants following Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip last month. Undercover forces - some disguised as vegetable vendors - arrested Ibrahim Ighnimat, a Hamas militant linked to a 1997 suicide bombing that killed three Israelis, four shooting attacks and the kidnapping and killing of an Israeli soldier, the army said. Israel has been hunting for Ighnimat, 47, for eight years and has doggedly collected information about him, said Lt. Col. David Kimchi, commander of the operation. Troops followed Ighnimat for several days and learned his daily routine before the arrest in the village of Tsurif, Kimchi said. The "vegetable vendors" were used to get forces into the town _ considered one of the more hostile in the Hebron region, he said. Ighnimat was sitting in the yard of his house when the soldiers arrived and tried to flee, but was arrested almost immediately, Kimchi said.
In another raid, the army arrested a 14-year-old Palestinian boy who told his interrogators that militants from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades _ which has ties to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement _ pressured him to carry out a suicide bombing after he quarreled with his father. Militant groups have increasingly turned to youths to carry out attacks in recent years, hoping the army would be less suspicious of them. The boy, identified by militants and his parents as Salah al Jitan, would have been one of the youngest Palestinian suicide bombers. Salah's parents, who confirmed their son is 14, said that after they quarreled with him about a month ago, five armed Al-Aqsa militants came to their house to tell them to leave the boy alone. Last week, they came again, this time to take him away for a suicide bombing, said his father, Moussa al Jitan. The father said Salah did not want to go, adding that he would not let them take him. The teenager did not leave the house until Israeli forces arrested him Monday, a move his parents welcomed. "Good, he will be in jail. That's better than dying," said Sariel al Jitan, his mother. The teenager said the militants threatened to kill him and tell everyone he was a collaborator with Israel if he didn't carry out the attack, the army said. Jamal Tirawi, an Al-Aqsa commander the army accused of recruiting the boy, said the account was "a lie." Tirawi said Salah was 17 and approached the group to volunteer to carry out an attack. Al-Aqsa refused because he is the only son in his family, Tirawi said. "The boy is lying, and the Israelis are lying," he said.
Meanwhile, in Dahariya, southwest of Hebron, a gunbattle erupted after troops surrounded a house and called on Hamas fugitive Haitham Battat to surrender. Battat was wanted in connection with a suicide bombing in Beersheba in May. During the fighting, bulldozers began demolishing the home, and Battat's mother was brought in to urge him to surrender. Shouting into the loudspeaker, she told him she loves him. Five minutes later, the fugitive left the house with his hands up. |