RAMALLAH, West Bank, 26 January 2008 — Israeli police yesterday declared a high alert level in Jerusalem and limited the entry of male Palestinian worshippers into the Al-Aqsa Masque Compound after two Palestinians and one Israeli were killed late Thursday in two simultaneous attacks in the city area, and for fear that worshippers will take advantage of the deteriorating security situation in the Gaza Strip and start riots at the end of the Friday prayer.
The entry into the holy place is limited to men over the age of 40, in possession of blue Israeli identity cards. Palestinian security sources said that Muhammad and Mahmoud Sabarna, both 20-year-old Hamas members from the village of Beit Omer, near West Bank city of Hebron were killed Thursday evening after breaking into the West Bank settlement of Kfar Etzion, south of Jerusalem.
The sources said that the two were released from an Israeli prison last week, after being imprisoned in Israel for the past two years for attempting to steal weapons from an Israeli army’s base in the Gush Etzion area.
Israeli security sources said that the two were armed with a gun and a knife and dressed in uniform, threatened students of a religious school in the settlement and the instructors with the weapons before being shot to death by the school’s instructors, two of whom were lightly injured while struggling with the Palestinians.
Meanwhile, Israeli security forces are continuing to comb the Shoafat area with the help of a helicopter for the Palestinians behind Thursday night’s shooting attack at the entrance to the north Jerusalem refugee camp, which left one Israeli Border Guard officer dead and another seriously injured.
Israeli investigators were able to say with certainty that one of police officers’ rifles was snatched by the attackers. Fatah activists belonging to the “Brigades of Return” and to “Black September” claimed responsibility for the shooting and said they were in possession of the missing rifle.
