IDF demolishes home of Judea terrorist involved in murder of Israeli boy

Israel Defense Forces soldiers on Saturday demolished the home of a terrorist who participated in the Judea shooting attack that killed a 12-year-old Israeli boy and wounded three others on Dec. 11, 2024.

Azmi Nader Abu Hilal, from the city of Dura, located around seven miles southwest of Hebron, was a member of a terrorist cell that “carried out the shooting attack on an Israeli bus at the Al-Khader Junction, in which 12-year-old Yehoshua Aharon Tuvya Simcha, of blessed memory, was murdered and three other civilians injured were,” the army said.

IDF soldiers “will continue to operate proactively and offensively to thwart terror and bring to justice terrorists who harmed the State of Israel,” the statement added.

The main suspect in the shooting attack, Ezz el-Din Malouh, from Beit Awwa, 14 miles west of Hebron, was indicted in an IDF military court along with three of his terrorist accomplices early last year.

The terrorist allegedly fired 23 bullets at a bus traveling on the Route 60 highway from Beitar Illit to Jerusalem. The bus driver continued toward the Tunnel Checkpoint in southern Jerusalem, where he stopped so the wounded could receive treatment and be evacuated to the hospital.

The 12-year-old victim, the son of a prominent rabbi who manages a yeshivah in the ultra-Orthodox Judea city of Beitar Illit, was pronounced dead after a medical team at the Hadassah Medical Center at Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem fought for his life for approximately two hours.