Israeli security forces recently killed Palestinian terrorists in Gaza who murdered a civilian and a soldier in Jerusalem almost 30 years ago, and who were exiled to the Strip in the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal in 2011, the Israel Defense Forces and Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) said in a joint statement on Monday.
In total, seven members of Hamas’s “military” wing were eliminated over the past week, the statement read. Among them were Riyad Assila and Bassem Abu Sanina, who in 1998 stabbed to death Israeli civilian Haim Karman.
Karman, 28, a yeshivah student, was murdered while walking through the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.
Terrorist Mohammed Saria, who was also killed in the IDF/Shin Bet operations, was charged in the past with killing IDF Staff Sgt. Ehud Tal in 1996, at the Dotan Civil Administration liaison office south of Jenin in Samaria. Tal was buried at the age of 21 in the cemetery of Kibbutz Maoz Haim in the Beit She’an Valley.
The three terrorists at the time were tasked with carrying out terrorist attacks in Judea and Samaria, according to the IDF and Shin Bet.
They were apprehended and sentenced to long prison terms, but were released and exiled to the Gaza Strip as part of the Shalit deal. Shalit, an IDF soldier, was kidnapped by Hamas along the Gaza border in 2006 and was freed five years later in exchange for 1,027 terrorist convicts.
All seven terrorists killed over the past week were convicted by Israel in the past for crimes with “blood on their hands.”
A series of Israeli strikes in Gaza over the past two weeks killed several senior Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad commanders, the IDF and Shin Bet said earlier on Monday.
The IDF and Shin Bet focused their efforts on units actively working to rebuild the military capabilities of the two terrorist organizations. These units included Hamas’s Weapons Production Headquarters and Military Intelligence Unit, both considered crucial to the organizations’ operational strength.
