A Palestinian armed group “Guevara Gaza” has claimed responsibility for the Monday killing of a Jewish settler, identified as Baruch Cohen, near the Jewish settlement of Neveh Daniel near the West Bank city of Bethlehem, said reports.
This is reportedly the second operation carried out by the leftist group, which is named for the nom de guerre of a leader of the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
According to Haaretz, the PFLP leader was killed in March, 1970, during an anti-terror campaign led by then-Southern Command chief Ariel Sharon, whose men killed scores of suspected militants during a seven-month operation that ended when Sharon's subordinates complained of the severity of his tactics. The command of the Gaza Strip was then temporarily transferred to the Israeli army Central Command.
Cohen lost control of his vehicle after being shot and crashed into a truck on the Bethlehem bypass road, said preliminary reports.
"The sniper may have fired from the bluffs in the nearby village of El Khader overlooking the road," an Israeli army spokesman said in a preliminary investigation following the attack, said Haaretz earlier.
Israel's army commander in the West Bank said following the attack that Palestinian police manning roadblocks near Bethlehem could have kept gunmen from carrying out the drive-by killing, according to Haaretz newspaper.
"I assume that if they had really wanted to thwart, to prevent (the attack), they could have done something in this regard," said Brigadier-General Benny Ganz.
Soon after the attack, Israeli troops re-imposed the recently-lifted blockade over Bethlehem, said the paper - Albawaba.com
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