Israeli security forces expand their efforts to find the terrorist who murdered Tze’ela Gez in a shooting attack on Wednesday near Bruchin in Samaria.
Military correspondent Doron Kadosh reported that a battalion of IDF officers‘ training cadets was called in to join the regional troops in their efforts. The cadets are expected to be deployed in the area on Thursday evening.
IDF forces have been going from house to house in the villages of Burqin and al-Dik, which are near the scene of the attack, in an attempt to reach the perpetrator. So far, security forces have yet to find any significant leads, and the defense establishment still does not know the terrorist’s identity.
An especially haunting detail found by the preliminary investigation into the attack is that a patrol by the company commander’s forward command center passed by the exact location of the attack several minutes before it happened. At the time of the attack, the patrol was only a few hundred meters away from the scene, and the troops rushed to the scene immediately. They reached the scene quickly, but the terrorist had already managed to flee.
The IDF sees outstanding similarities between the four terror attacks that were committed in the area over the past few months: in all cases, a single terrorist using a rifle shot at an Israeli vehicle, and used a laser to blind the drivers shortly before carrying out the attack. Most security officials estimate that all of the attacks were committed by the same terrorist who has yet to be caught.
