Meir Tamari, a father of two from the northern West Bank settlement of Hermesh who was shot dead in a terror attack was to be buried on Wednesday afternoon, the day he would have celebrated his 32nd birthday.
The Israel Defense Forces was continuing to search for the gunmen who carried out the attack on Tuesday.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group, loosely linked to the Palestinian Authority’s ruling Fatah party, claimed responsibility for the deadly attack, but did not provide any evidence.
In surveillance camera footage, Tamari’s blue vehicle could be seen slowing before a turning to the settlement where he lived, when a white SUV overtakes and stops next to his car.
The terrorists opened fire at Tamari from a close range, hitting him multiple times in the upper body. He continued driving until he reached the settlement’s entrance, a few hundred meters away, where security guards alerted medics.
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Tamari, in serious condition, was taken by helicopter to a hospital where he was later declared dead.
The IDF was searching for the terrorists who carried out the attack in a number of Palestinian villages and towns in the area. Hermesh is located to the west of Jenin and north of Tulkarem, both considered by military officials to be hotbeds of terrorist activity.
A number of roads had been closed by the IDF in the area after the attack.
Tamari had moved to Hermesh some four years ago after getting married to Tal, a resident of the West Bank settlement, the Samaria regional council said. He was survived by his wife and two young children, aged one and three.
Tal Tamari is the stepdaughter of Binyamin Horgen, whose first wife Esther was murdered by a Palestinian while she went for a walk in a forest near her home in December 2020.
Tamari’s funeral was slated to take place at the Shaked settlement’s cemetery at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday.
Israeli soldiers search in the West Bank village of Qafin for the gunmen who shot and killed an Israeli civilian near the entrance to the settlement of Hermesh, May 30, 2023. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)
Over the past year, Palestinian gunmen have repeatedly targeted troops carrying out arrest raids, military posts, Israeli settlements and civilians on the roads.
On Monday night, a military ambulance was targeted in a shooting attack in the southern West Bank, and Palestinian terrorists opened fire at a settlement in the northern West Bank and a town in Israel bordering the security barrier on Sunday, causing slight damage.
Tensions between Israel and the Palestinians have been elevated for the past year, with the military carrying out near-nightly raids in the West Bank, in the wake of a series of deadly Palestinian terror attacks.
The IDF said that during arrest raids early Wednesday, troops detained eight wanted Palestinians, none of them thought to be connected to Tuesday’s deadly attack.
A string of Palestinian attacks in Israel and the West Bank has killed 20 people since the start of this year and left several more seriously hurt.
At least 112 West Bank Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of the year — most of them while carrying out attacks or during clashes with security forces, but some were uninvolved civilians or were killed under circumstances that are being investigated.
