Eight Arrested In Probe Of Jewish Merkaz Harav Seminary Terror Attack
March 8, 2008 by national
Filed under World Report
Israeli police have arrested eight people during an investigation into Thursday’s deadly attack at a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem, spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said Saturday.
Rosenfeld would not elaborate on the nature of the investigation or how the eight might be connected to the gunman or the shooting.
Eight students, including an American, died Thursday evening after a man armed with an automatic weapon and a handgun slipped into the Merkaz Harav yeshiva.
At least nine others were wounded before an off-duty Israel Defense Forces officer shot and killed the gunman, Jerusalem District Police Cmdr. Aharon Franko said.
A Jerusalem police spokesman identified the shooter Friday as Ala Abu Dehein from East Jerusalem’s Jabel Mukaber neighborhood.
He worked as a driver and held an identity card that Israel issues to Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem.
The attack was planned and conceived by the Free Men of Galilee, an operation with purported ties to Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group in Lebanon, sources in Gaza said.
The information was provided to CNN amid news reports that Hamas, the Palestinian movement that runs Gaza, claimed responsibility for the attack.
But the sources said that Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza are not claiming responsibility for the attack and that the Hamas military wing says it had nothing to do with it.
