Hamas gunmen murder four Israelis in ambush near Hebron
DEBKAfile Special Report August 31, 2010, 8:32 PM (GMT+02:00)
Hamas gunmen killed four Israeli civilians - all residents of Bet Haggai - in their car at the Beni Naim junction near Kiryat Arba Tuesday night, Aug. 31. They are identified as Yitzhak (47) and Tali (45) Ames, parents of six and Cochava Even Haim (37) and Avishai Schindler (34) who were expecting their second child. The gunmen fired a hail of automatic fire from a following car, then approached the bullet-riddled vehicle and fired again at point-blank range to make sure their victims were dead.
DEBKAfile's counter-terror sources report: The IDF and security authorities failed to anticipate this attack on a West Bank highway although Hamas had threatened to unleash terror against Israel to sabotage the Israel-Palestinian talks about to start in Washington this week. This was reported by DEBKAfile last Wednesday.
Tuesday night, Hamas took responsibility for the murderous ambush and warned it was just the beginning and worse was still to come.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who received the news two hours before he landed in the US capital to join the summit with President Barak Obama and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, ordered the defense minister and chief and staff to hunt the killers and their masters down and punish them without regard to diplomatic considerations. He refrained from ordering them to target Hamas command centers in Damascus and Gaza from which the attack was planned.
In a special message, Netanyahu said he "strengthened the hands of our brothers and sisters in Judea and Samaria." West Bank Jewish leaders announced the resumption of building Wednesday Sept. 1 and an end to the government construction freeze due to expire on Sept. 26. They said that every Israel attempt to attain peace in fifteen years had been met with brutal bloodshed.
Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi visited the scene of the attack as the hunt for the perpetrators got underway in the Hebron vicinity.
DEBKAfile Special Report August 31, 2010, 6:45 AM (GMT+02:00)
The Dutch public prosecutor said the two Yemeni men are being held on suspicion of a conspiracy to commit a terrorist criminal act. Ahmed Mohamed Nasser al-Soofi and Hezam al-Mursi were arrested at Schiphol on arrival from Chicago after US authorities had raised concerns about suspicious items in their luggage and feared they were making a dry run for a terrorist attack. The luggage, which had been checked through to another destination, contained box cutters, knives and a cell phone taped to a medicine bottle, three cell phones taped together and several watches taped together and 7,000 dollars.
The Dutch prosecutor promised to make the conspiracy public if the men were charged.
The incident recalls former cases of lax security at US airports for both domestic and international flights.
They were allowed to fly out of Chicago aboard United Airlines Flight 908 because they did not carry explosives or "prohibited items" in their carry-on baggage, even though security concerns about the pair began in Birmingham, Alabama, were Soofi was stopped over his bulky clothing.
The suspect items and cash were found in his luggage but because no explosives were found he was cleared for the flight to Chicago.
There, he appears to have checked his luggage on a flight bound for Yemen with stops at Washington's Dulles Airport and Dubai while he joined Mursi and the two boarded a flight to Amsterdam.
His unaccompanied luggage traveled as far as Washington when officials learned he was not aboard the next lap of the flight to Dubai. The plane was ordered to return to the gate, where the baggage was removed.
DEBKAfile's counter-terror sources add: This chain of events suggests the two men belonged to an al Qaeda cell which had been instructed to reverse the expected procedure for an attack inside the United States. Instead of preparing an explosive device in the Middle East for smuggling into the United States, the materials were to be shipped to Yemen, rigged there with explosives there and returned in suitcases bearing US security markings as cleared luggage.
The Chicago and Birmingham, Alabama airports both slipped up when they failed to arrest Soofi.
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