Thursday, August 16, 2018

16-Aug-18: The victim of an Arab-on-Israeli vehicle-ramming tonight is a young woman [Multiple UPDATES]

Israel National News has reported tonight (Thursday) that an Israeli woman was killed in a vehicle-ramming attack in Israel's Samaria district:
A young woman in her 20s was murdered in a ramming terrorist attack that took place Thursday night near Havat Gilad in Samaria. Magen David Adom paramedics attempted to resuscitate the victim, but were forced to declare her death. The assailant fled the scene. IDF forces began searching the area. In January, Rabbi Raziel Shevach of Havat Gilad was murdered in a drive-by shooting attack.
We hope they're wrong about her condition. Times of Israel describes the victim as being alive but in  a very bad way. A MaarivOnline tweet says the attack happened at 9:32 pm tonight.

We wrote about how six more Israeli children - Renana, 10; Naomi, 8; Miriam, 6; Malka, 5; Ovadia, 3; and Benayahu, 10 months - all from Havat Gil'ad, became orphans in that January 2018 vehicle ramming at the same spot as tonight's - see "10-Jan-18: Hamas praises a murderous drive-by shooting that orphans six young Israeli children". The attacker was eliminated in a shoot-out with Israeli security forces a few weeks after that ramming murder.

Sorry to say, Ynet says tonight's Israeli victim has died. It adds
"The driver fled the scene, with the IDF suspected he escaped to the nearby Palestinian village of Jit."
UPDATE: At the Jerusalem Post in a report published around 10:20 pm tonight, they're not sure if this was a terror attack:
An Israeli woman was killed in a hit-and-run incident near the Havat Gilad outpost in the Samaria region of the West Bank. It was not immediately clear if it was a vehicular attack or a car accident. The woman was hit as she crossed Route [blank] near the outpost. The car appeared to be a Palestinian taxi, which fled the scene...  According to KAN Radio, the Palestinian driver was afraid to stop. He drove straight to the nearby Palestinian city of Nablus and turned himself into the police there, where he clarified that the incident was an accident. A Magen David Adom paramedic said that the woman was found unconscious in a ditch and had sustained massive injuries. She was not breathing nor did she have a heart beat, the paramedic said. They were unable to revive her and she was declared dead at the scene.
UPDATE Friday August 17, 2018  at 7:00 am: According to a Times of Israel update, the victim is a woman "in her forties" from the Israeli community of Emmanuel. Her name is not yet published as "some family members were still being sought to notify them of the death".

UPDATE Friday August 17, 2018 at 2:00 pm: The Israeli victim struck in last night's incident is named today as 42-year-old Hava Roizen. Roizen was struck by the vehicle on Route 60, near the Havat Gilad outpost. She was declared dead by the Magen David Adom ambulance service after paramedics were unable to resuscitate her. Times of Israel says 
Following a preliminary investigation, the army said it was “highly likely” that the fatal crash was a hit-and-run incident rather than a terror attack. The driver fled the scene and was later spotted near the Palestinian village of Jit where he turned himself in to Palestinian Authority police. A senior PA official told the Times of Israel the driver was a 63-year-old male who insisted what happened had been an accident and not an attack. The official added that the man would remain in the custody of the PA police and would be dealt with by the PA judicial system. “I was afraid that if I stopped they would kill me, so I fled,” the driver told Palestinian police, according to Hebrew media reports.  Roizen was a resident of the small ultra-Orthodox settlement of Emmanuel...  An immigrant from the former Soviet Union, Roizen worked as a photographer, frequently hitchhiking around the country to events, an Emmanuel resident [said] “She was incredibly dedicated to her job. She’d travel wherever it was necessary, and I’d often see her returning to Emmanuel at very late hours,” he said, referring to Roizen and her husband as humble people.While military sources said the preliminary investigation found that the incident was a hit-and-run, they had not definitely ruled out the possibility that it was a terror attack.
As to whether terror was involved, the chairman of the Shomron Regional Council Yossi Dagan is quoted:
"From the point of view of the military commanders in the field, and from our point of view as well, this is a terror attack for all intents and purposes,” he claimed. The settler leader pointed out that the junction is well lit and that there were no skid marks or other signs that the driver had tried to come to a sudden halt. “This is another terror attack, a cold-blooded murder of a Samaria resident on a central road in the State of Israel.”
UPDATE Wednesday September 12, 2018
Times of Israel reports today that the Palestinian Arab driver of the vehicle that allegedly struck Hava Roizen and killed her
was indicted Wednesday for a hit-and-run, ruling out speculations of a terror motive in the incident. The death... last month was initially reported as a possible car-ramming attack, though police said at the time that it was more likely to have been an accident. The indictment against Kamal Kadari, 60, was filed at the IDF’s Samaria Military Court, charging him with negligent homicide and abandoning the scene of an accident, the Kan public radio broadcaster reported. Kadari, who turned himself in to the Palestinian Authority police after the incident, remains in PA custody... Kadari, who had five passengers in his car at the time, did not notice the Israeli woman in the road, the report said... Kadari fled the scene and was later spotted near the Palestinian village of Jit, where he gave himself up to PA police.

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