The Israeli army was on high alert along the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel Friday ahead of weekly border rallies, amid concern of a potential escalation after days of rising violence in the region.
There were conflicting reports as to the intentions of the Hamas terror group, which rules the territory, ahead of the afternoon demonstrations.
Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported that Israel was conditioning the entry of new Qatari cash into the Strip on Hamas maintaining the peace until after the Israeli elections on September 17. But it said Hamas intended to raise tensions at the protests, with sources in the organization saying events would be more violent than in recent weeks, and that Hamas was considering renewing widespread sabotage attacks on the security fence, launching of arson balloons and nighttime rioting.
Recent days have seen an uptick in violence on the frontier. Rockets were fired at Israel from the enclave late Wednesday and early Thursday, prompting Israeli reprisal attacks.
The IDF on Thursday blamed the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad for the recent increase in violence from Gaza and called for Hamas to rein in the terror group. “We do not plan to accept terror attacks and rocket fire against our citizens,” the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee tweeted.
A teenage girl was killed and her father and brother were seriously injured in a terrorist bombing at a natural spring outside the central West Bank settlement of Dolev on Friday morning, Israeli officials said.
Rina Shnerb, 17, of Lod, was critically wounded in the attack and received treatment at the scene from civilian and military medics before being pronounced dead of her injuries. Her father Eitan, a rabbi in Lod, and brother Dvir, 19, were taken by military helicopter to a Jerusalem hospital in serious condition, the Magen David Adom ambulance service said.
Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson Ronen Manelis said the army considered the blast to be a “serious terror attack.”
The army said an improvised explosive device was used in the attack, but it was not immediately clear if the bomb was thrown at the family or if it had been planted earlier and was triggered when the family approached it.
Security services were reportedly tracking a car that fled the scene shortly after the explosion. “IDF soldiers are searching the area,” the military said in a statement.
Manelis said the IDF did not yet know the identities of the culprits or if they belonged to an established terror group or were acting alone.
Troops were working to find the terrorists behind the attack as quickly as possible, under the general understanding that the more time they have to flee, the more difficult the search effort becomes.
The explosion occurred at the Bubin spring — a popular hiking spot — approximately 10 kilometers east of the city of Modiin.
“Our surroundings are full of natural springs and hiking to them is an inseparable part of residents’ lives,” Yael, a resident of Dolev, told Channel 12 news. “There is a difficult feeling.”
She said a bomb attack was “a severe escalation” the likes of which the community had not encountered “in over 20 years.”
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