Gush Etzion – Israeli Woman Killed In Terror Stabbing In Third Attack Of Day

Gush Etzion – A Palestinian terrorist stabbed and killed young woman on Sunday afternoon as she stood at a bus stop in the Gush Etzion junction in the West Bank.

IDF forces who responded to Sunday’s attack immediately shot and killed the suspected stabber, identified as Atzam Tuabata, a 34-year-old resident of Beit Fajar, near Bethlehem in the West Bank. According to the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), Tuabata did not have a criminal record.

Magen David Adom paramedic Zaki Yahav said that when he arrived at the scene he saw “on the sidewalk near the bus station a young woman in her twenties, who lay unconscious with stab wounds to her upper body.”

“Citizens at the site began to provide first aid and they were trying to stop the bleeding. We quickly moved her into the ambulance and we evacuated her to hospital on a respirator,” Yahav said.

Hadar Buchris, a 21-year-old woman from Safed, was pronounced dead at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. The head of Shaare Zedek’s trauma unit, Doctor Ofer Marin said that the woman had multiple stab wounds in her head and chest. She was not breathing when she arrived and did not have a pulse. The hospital’s medical staff was unable to revive her, Marin said.

It was the third such West Bank attack of the day and the second terror attack at the junction in the last four days. Three people were killed in a terror attack on Thursday, just around the corner from where the bus stop is located.

Sunday’s attacks came two days before Kerry is scheduled to arrive in an attempt to calm tensions stemming from a two-month wave of violence that shows no signs of slowing. It will mark his first visit to the area to meet Israeli and Palestinian leaders in more than a year.