Beit Horon stabbing attack

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Two Palestinian terrorists stabbed two Israeli women and threw pipe bombs at a grocery store in the West Bank settlement of Beit Horon on Monday night.On Tuesday morning, Hadassah University Medical Center released a statement to say that one of the victims of the attack, Shlomit Krigman, a 23-year old woman from Shadmot Mehola in the Jordan Valley, had died from her wounds following the attack.The funeral for Krigman was set to take place Tuesday at 1 p.m. at Her Hamenuchot cemetery in Jerusalem's Gival Shaul. The funeral was scheduled to be closed to the press.The Beit Horon community on Tuesday morning expressed its sympathies over Krigman's death."Shlomit was loved and known, during her national service she served as a youth group leader for the Bnei Akiva branch in Beit Horon. Over the past year, Shlomit was living with her grandparents in the Krigman family home in the community," the statement read.The other victim, 58, who was moderately wounded in the stabbing remained hospitalized in the capital's Shaare Zedek Medical Center on Tuesday.During the attack, cashier Mordechai Shalem used a large metal shopping cart to stop them from entering the store, saving the lives of those who were inside.The assailants fled from the store in the direction of homes in the settlement, but within moments a security guard shot and killed them.The commander of the Binyamin police station, Ch.- Supt. David Hayun, said the attack on the community located just off of Route 443 signified “a serious escalation.”The two attackers infiltrated a settlement armed with knives and explosives, succeeding in stabbing two victims, he said. The three pipe bombs thrown failed to explode.The infiltrators had jumped over the Beit Horon security fence at around 5 p.m. near the grocery store and stabbed two women.There were children and women in the store, Shalem recalled for Channel 2.Determined not to let them in, he immediately blocked them with a shopping cart, pushing the cart at them several times and not budging, even though they had drawn knives. The dramatic moments were caught on the store’s security camera.“It was frightening,” he said. “Two people were standing next to me with knives.I could see the hate and the anger. They screamed ‘Allahu akbar’ and I said, ‘dogs get out of here.’” After a couple seconds they ran away, he added.“It was a clear miracle,” he added, not wanting to imagine what would have happened if they had entered the store.The slain terrorists were identified as Ibrahim Yusef Allan, 23, from the village of Beit Ur al-Tahta and Hussein Abu Gosh, 17, from the Kalandiya refugee camp.The IDF cordoned off Beit Ur al-Tahta on Monday night, allowing only humanitarian passage in and out of the community, an army spokeswoman said.The Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria is to freeze the work permits that were issued to family members of the terrorists.Following the attack, President Reuven Rivlin issued a statement of solidarity with the victims.“My thoughts and prayers are with those wounded and fighting for their lives after the serious terrorist attack at Beit Horon.These difficult times are fraught with confrontation and we will overcome. We will continue to fight against terrorism and the incitement that drives it. In the face of terrorism, we choose life.”This was the third successful attack within a settlement in the last eight days. Last Sunday, a terrorist stabbed to death a mother of six, Dafna Meir, in her home in the Otniel settlement. A day later, a terrorist stabbed and wounded Michal Froman, who was five months pregnant, in the Tekoa settlement.Security forces have been on heightened alert around settlements since last week, following the successive knife attacks in Otniel and Tekoa, and earlier assessments that terrorists could increasingly attempt to infiltrate communities and carry out attacks.A according to security sources, in recent days the IDF took a number of steps to boost security in the settlements, out of a concern that copycat attackers would seek to emulate the “success” of the past week’s terrorist attacks.Additionally, the IDF called on all civilians with gun licenses living beyond the Green Line to be armed.In December, a military source said the army was preparing for a significant escalation in the severity of West Bank terrorism, and was preparing to encounter increased firearms attacks, as well as attempted intrusions by armed assailants into West Bank settlements.Khaled Abu Toameh contributed to this report.