The Israel Defense Forces said Saturday morning that the Israeli security guard who was shot dead by two Palestinian gunmen outside the Jewish city of Ariel in the central West Bank overnight was killed as he shielded another security guard at the gate and moved to block the entrance to the city.
A preliminary investigation of the attack revealed that the two assailants pulled up at the city's gate armed with Carl Gustav submachine guns and opened fire at the guard shack. They then got out of the vehicle and shot the 23-year-old guard from point-blank.
Footage from the scene of the attack
(Video: Magen David Adom )
The guard shielded his partner with his body and took three of at least ten bullets fired, killing him.
One of the gunmen then returned to the car, made a U-turn and picked up the other assailant, who was waiting for him on the other side of the road.
Tomer Fein, a paramedic for the Magen David Adom ambulance service, who was among the first to arrive at the scene, said: “When we arrived, we saw a man - unconscious with gunshot wounds. He was not breathing and did not have a pulse. We performed medical tests and had to pronounce his death."
According to the footage, the two did not enter Ariel itself and fled in the direction of a nearby village.
They arrived at the entrance to the city in a blue Suzuki with Israeli license plates, which apparently belonged in the past to a car that was taken off the road. The terrorists' vehicle was later found after being set on fire and abandoned.
The IDF launched a manhunt after the gunmen and surrounded the Palestinian town of Salfit south of Ariel. Security forces searched everyone entering and leaving the town.
Hamas welcomed the attack and said that "Ariel was built on our occupied lands in Salfit. This attack and the ongoing resistance operations dispel the illusions of those who thought that the settlers' actions and daily crimes against our people, our country and our holy places would go without an answer from the resistance."
Meanwhile, a video was released showing a masked man in military fatigue accepting responsibility for the attack on behalf of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, the military wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement. The authenticity of the video is unclear.
The attack in Ariel joins a spate of Islamist terrorist attacks in Israeli cities since late March which claimed the lives of 15 Israelis.
On April 7, Tomer Morad and Eitam Magini, 27-year-old childhood friends from Kfar Saba, were shot dead by a Palestinian gunman while out for a drink at a Tel Aviv pub.
Hours later, 35-year-old Barak Lufan, a father of three from Givat Shmuel who was critically wounded in the attack, succumbed to his wounds in the hospital.
The terrorist was located hours after the attack hiding outside a mosque in Tel Aviv's Jaffa and was killed in a firefight after shooting at Israeli forces.
A week earlier, five people had been killed in a shooting attack in Bnei Brak. A Palestinian terrorist from the Jenin area shot dead four civilians and was then killed in a shootout with police, in which officer Amir Khouri was also killed.
Two days earlier, Border Police officers Yazan Fallah and Shiral Aboukaret were killed by two Islamic State-affiliated Israeli terrorists from Umm al-Fahm who ambushed them at a bus stop in Hadera. The terrorists were killed by Border Police officers and a Shin Bet operative who were dining at a nearby restaurant and heard the shooting.
The week before, four Israelis were killed in a ramming and stabbing attack at an outdoor shopping mall in Be'er Sheva carried out by an Islamic-State affiliated Israeli resident of the Bedouin town of Hura in the southern Negev region. The attacker was shot and killed by two armed civilians at the scene.
Following the attacks, Israel launched a series of counterterrorism crackdowns in the West Bank, dubbed Operation Breakwater.