Israeli forces killed a Hebron imam on Saturday after he opened fire on the city’s Jewish neighborhood with an automatic rifle.
No Israeli casualties were reported.
Mahmoud Nofal was captured on video as he fired toward the city’s Jewish neighborhood from a cemetery in the Abu Sanina neighborhood.
IDF forces reacted quickly, neutralizing the terrorist and carrying out an extensive search to ensure he had acted alone.
Maj. Israel, company commander of the Israel Defense Forces’ 92nd Brigade, said that around noon on Saturday his forces had responded after hearing a burst of gunfire. His forces flanked the terrorist from the left and right and neutralized him.
“We understood afterwards that only one terrorist was involved. Thank God no one was hurt,” he said.
The terrorist had served as imam of Hebron’s Al-Qassam Mosque, and was a known Hamas activist.
According to Religious Zionism Party Knesset member Orit Strook, a resident of the Hebron, Nofal was not shooting randomly.
“This damned terrorist…did not fire ‘against the settlement in Hebron.’ He shot from point-blank range at two children, who walked innocently on the only street allowed for Jewish movement in Hebron.
“I will bring my neighbor’s soccer ball—a 5th grade student—to the Cabinet meeting tomorrow,” she said. “The ball took a bullet instead of the boy, who was saved by God’s grace.”
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir of the Otzma Yehudit Party called on the Prime Minister to embrace his policy of putting “as many barriers and restrictions as possible on the residents of the P.A.”
The shooting proved once more that Israelis’ right to life takes priority over Palestinian Authority residents’ freedom of movement, he said.
“Whoever wakes up in the morning and all he thinks about is how to murder as many Jews as possible should not be given freedom of movement and allowed to carry out his plan,” he said.
On Thursday, a terrorist killed Israeli soldier Uri Moyal at a gas station near Beit Kama in the northern Negev.
The terrorist, Fadi Abu Latif, 22, was born in the Gaza Strip and lived there till the age of 18. He was granted Israeli citizenship in 2019 after getting married and was a resident of the Bedouin city of Rahat.
