Two Israeli women were killed over the weekend in separate terrorist attacks in Jerusalem and the northern West Bank. Moranne Amit, 25, a law student at the University of Haifa, was stabbed to death on Friday by four Palestinian teenagers in the Peace Forest near the Sherover Promenade in southern Jerusalem. Atala Lipovsky, 79, was shot dead and her son lightly wounded on Saturday night in road shooting south of Nablus in the West Bank.

The attack on Amit took place early Friday afternoon, when Amit and friend Gil Nevo were walking in the Peace Forest and encountered four masked assailants armed with knives. The two fled in separate directions. The Palestinians caught up with her and stabbed her multiple times. Police succeeded in reaching her by cell phone, and she told them that she was wounded, hiding in the bushes. Approximately 40 minutes after she was stabbed, but only minutes after being summoned to the scene, police found Amit and evacuated her to Hadassah Hospital, where she died of her wounds later that night.

The police apprehended all four Palestinian attackers, residents of the mixed Jewish-Arab Abu Tor neighborhood. One was lightly wounded by gunshots in the hand and foot. Another, Samar Abu Miala, 14, collapsed and died shortly after his arrest. Police initially claimed that he died of a heart attack, but an autopsy revealed a bullet in his stomach, the apparent cause of his death.

Palestinian head of preventative security in Gaza, Mohammed Dahlan, claimed that Miala was innocent of any crime and that the police officers beat him to death for no reason. "They murdered the boy in cold blood and afterward claimed he carried out an attack," Dahlan said.

Police flatly rejected the claim and said that the surviving attackers re-enacted the assault and led them to a nearby cave where they stored weapons and materials for Molotov cocktails.

According to Yediot Aharonot, Police said the Palestinians youths confessed that after attacking homes in nearby Armon Hanatziv months ago with Molotov cocktails, they were disappointed by the lack of significant damage, and unsuccessfully tried igniting gas cannisters next to apartment buildings. After this failure, they bought clubs and beat a Spanish tourist, then purchased knives with which they stabbed resident Henry Weill. When this attack did not result in death, they bought larger knives, which they used to kill Amit.

IDF raids refugee camp near Nablus after fatal road shooting
The road shooting which claimed the life of Lipovsky, an immigrant from the Ukraine, occurred around 10 pm on Saturday night. A resident of the nearby settlement of Ma'aleh Ephraim, she was a passenger in a car on the Trans-Samaria highway. Initial findings indicate that the shots were fired from a car parked on the shoulder of the road, which after the attack fled toward the nearby Palestinian controlled area.

The driver of the car, her son Victor Lipovsky, 50, was wounded in the attack but managed to continue driving toward the nearby Tapuach junction, where he notified soldiers at an IDF checkpoint. "They shot at us, my mother is beside me, and I think she's dead," he reported on his cellular phone. Two Israeli ambulances reached the junction but could not save the woman, who was shot in her head. Soldiers sealed the area and searched for the attackers.

Army troops, tanks, and armored personnel carriers subsequently surrounded two areas in Nablus early Sunday morning and arrested three Palestinian brothers, Israel Radio reported. Palestinian sources said at least seven Palestinians were wounded, two critically, in an exchange of fire between troops and local militants that accompanied the incursion.

Soldiers conducted a sweep for militants in a neighborhood and the Askar refugee camp, both located in the eastern side of the city, and withdrew approximately two-and-a-half hours later. The Associated Press reported that this was the first time that Israel had raided a refugee camp since the current round of violence began some seventeen months ago.

IDF sources also said that the weeks- long blockade on Nablus was tightened to thwart ongoing efforts by Palestinian militants to transport Kassam rockets out of the city and deploy them against Israeli cities.

An apparent attempt by Palestinians to bring an explosive charge into Israel on Friday night ended with an apparent "work accident" which destroyed the vehicle and its two occupants not far from an IDF checkpoint.

IDF enters Tamoun to hunt Hamra accomplices
On Friday night, soldiers from the Nahal Brigade and armored units, backed by engineering units, began a blockade of the West Bank village of Tamoun, east of Nablus. The IDF said it was searching for accomplices of Mohammed Ziad al-Khalili, who infiltrated the nearby Jewish settlement of Hamra on Wednesday and murdered an IDF soldier, a mother and her daughter.

Tracks from the Hamra infiltrations led to Tamoun, which is about ten kilometers (six miles) northwest of the Jewish settlement. IDF forces were also reportedly operating near the town of Tubas, which, like Tamoun, has served as a base for terrorist attacks in the Jordan Valley, military sources said.

Foreign Affairs Minister Shimon Peres, functioning as both acting prime minister and acting defense minister while Ariel Sharon and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer are abroad, said on Friday that he ordered the incursion into Tamoun, which he said houses "a concentration of people who are planning attacks in Israel." Peres noted that several attempts to carry out terror attacks against Israel in the past three days had been foiled, and that the Palestinian Authority had not condemned the attack on Hamra.

The army continued its operation in Tamoun on Saturday. Palestinian sources reported that 20 residents of the town were arrested during house-to-house searches. The IDF said that it had arrested 15 people, and all had been released.

Also on Friday, Israeli forces entered a Palestinian neighborhood in the city of Hebron and arrested a leading activist from Islamic Jihad, Jamal Shehadeh. A IDF statement said Palestinians fired on the troops as they left, no injuries were reported.

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