The Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and the Israel Police announced on Sunday the arrest of six alleged members of an Islamic State terror cell in the Arab Israeli city of Nazareth in the country’s north.
The suspects were arrested in September after security forces concluded that they were plotting to launch terror attacks inside Israel. One of the suspects is known to security forces due to past ISIS involvement, the Shin Bet said in a statement.
The investigation found that the suspects consumed online ISIS content, and that “at a certain stage, took the decision to implement a terror attack in ISIS’s name.”
They allegedly conducted secret meetings, and began plotting attacks, with a main intended target being a Muslim high school in their home city, which the suspected believed “acted in line with the infidels,” according to the investigation.
“The suspects intended to attack an educational institute containing teenagers ... and teaching staff,” said the statement. They also plotted attacks on a crowded bus station in northern Israel, a police station in Nazareth, and forests in which Jewish Israelis walk through.
The Shin Bet statement hailed the arrest of the cell as “significant,” adding that the incident shed light on the influence of ISIS in Israel. The terror organization “continues without cease to spread its ideology among citizens of the State of Israel and its residents, and works to recruit them through, among other means, online propaganda, including on social media networks, to promote terror attacks in Israel,” the statement said.
The six suspects were charged on Sunday with a string of severe security offenses.
