A terrorist who tried to carry out a stabbing attack at the entrance to Moshav Netiv HaAsara located near the border with northern Gaza was neutralized on Monday morning. The terrorist, a Muslim Canadian man, was shot and killed by members of the local alert squad in the moshav, and the police and the IDF confirmed that it was a suspected terror attack.
The IDF confirms that the attacker "is a foreign national who came to the scene from Israel and not from the Gaza Strip."
The scene of the stabbing attack at Netiv HaAsara
(Video: Magen David Adom)
The attacker, a Canadian national, arrived at the entrance to the moshav in a rented car. He got out of the vehicle with a knife, shouted that "the IDF is killing civilians in Gaza" and aimed his knife at the soldiers guarding the gate of the settlement, who opened fire and neutralized him.
Magen David Adom reports that news of the attempted stabbing was received at the call center at 11:08 a.m.. No injuries have been reported, but a 61-year-old woman is being treated on the scene for shock, and does not appear to require evacuation to a hospital, according to MDA.
MDA paramedics Noa Abitbul and Yossi Smadga said: "When we arrived at the scene, they told us that a terrorist arrived at the scene tried to stab and was neutralized by the security forces. We scanned the area to make sure there were no casualties."
A member of the alert squad said: "He got out of the vehicle with a knife and shouted in English. He tried to get closer and was within striking distance. There were three of us at the gate, and we immediately neutralized him. He shouted at us, 'You are murdering people in Gaza.'"
In the first phase of the war, the IDF's Gaza Division invested in the establishment of a new and large buffer zone in the northern Gaza Strip, and flattened a kilometer-wide strip between the border adjacent and the first houses of the towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun. Large ongoing security forces operate frequently in this area, also on the Gaza side of the buffer zone, following the key lesson of October 7, in order to immediately identify and neutralize by shooting any suspicious movement within a kilometer of the fence.
At the beginning of the year, fighters in the region complained that they were limited in shooting at suspects who approached, but the army explained that the instructions to open fire are much more permissive compared to the past, and the caution that is sometimes taken stems from the fear that hostages who escaped from captivity will approach the border fence in the region. IDF has held regular activity in nearby Beit Hanoun in recent months, and includes local raids on a battalion scale.