Skip to main content

Pay-to-Slay? Teenage Terrorist Kills 1, Injures 2, Shot Dead at the Scene

Share This article

JERUSALEM, Israel – Yotam Ovadia, 31, who succumbed to multiple stab wounds to his upper body, was laid to rest in Jerusalem early Friday afternoon. He's survived by his wife, Tal, and two children, Harel, 2 and Itai, 7 months.

According to Israeli media, the attack took place around 9:00 Thursday evening. A 17-year-old resident of a nearby Arab village, identified as Mohammed Tarik Yousef, climbed over the security fence, walked until he spotted his first victim and stabbed him repeatedly.

Yousef then attacked his second victim, a 58-year-old man, who came outside to see what was happening, stabbing him multiple times in the torso.

His third victim, Assaf Ravid, 41, who also ran to the scene, managed to shoot the attacker, killing him, despite stab wounds to his arms and shoulders.

When paramedics arrived, they stabilized the two unconscious men, rushed them to hospitals, where only one survived.

The attack took place in Adam, a small town in the Binyamin Region, just off Route 60, near a road that leads to Ramallah, headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority (PA).

According to Israeli media, the attacker left a suicide note on his Facebook page. The day before, a PA spokesman warned that Israel planned to destroy the al-Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount, a ploy used periodically to incite the populace. Yousef is said to have mentioned the site in his suicide note.

Immediately following the attack, Israeli security forces entered the village of Kobar, the terrorist's hometown, where they interrogated his family, suspended their entry permits and prepared documentation to demolish the house, Arutz Sheva reported.

During the overnight investigation about 150 residents of Kobar hurled rocks and firebombs at the troops, set tires on fire, rolling them toward security forces.

The IDF, Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and Border Police are comparing a terror attack last year by another of resident of Kobar in which three members of the Salomon family were brutally murdered. That attack took place in nearby Halamish.

Omar al-Abed, 19, is serving four consecutive life sentences for the murders in Halamish.

Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip praised Thursday's attack.

Meanwhile, Osama Qawassmeh, a spokesman for Abbas' Fatah party, said the stone that fell from the Temple Mount wall earlier this week proves that Israel plans to destroy the al-Aksa Mosque and replace it with the Third Jewish Temple, Jerusalem Post Palestinian Affairs correspondent Khaled Abu Toameh reported.

Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev said PA incitement is the real culprit.

"A youth brainwashed with hatred and filled with incitement goes out with an ax and a knife to murder families in their homes," the Times of Israel quoted Regev's statement. "We need to root out the source of this hatred where it is grown by the Palestinian Authority."

Share This article

About The Author

Tzippe
Barrow

From her perch high atop the mountains surrounding Jerusalem, Tzippe Barrow tries to provide a bird’s eye view of events unfolding in her country. Tzippe’s parents were born to Russian Jewish immigrants, who fled the czar’s pogroms to make a new life in America. As a teenager, Tzippe wanted to spend a summer in Israel, but her parents, sensing the very real possibility that she might want to live there, sent her and her sister to Switzerland instead. Twenty years later, the Lord opened the door to visit the ancient homeland of her people.