Three Israeli soldiers were attacked today by several hundred villagers in Dir el Assad village in the Jodaean region of the West Bank and were forced to open fire to protect themselves. Two of the soldiers were injured and three of the villagers were wounded, one of them seriously. Police and army reinforcements searched the village afterwards and arrested 20 Arabs suspected of participating in the attack.
According to eye-witness accounts, the soldiers were riding in a car with civilian license plates which suddenly came under a barrage of stones and chunks of wood. A bus, parked on a downward slope on the main road, had its brakes released and careened into the soldiers’ car.
As the soldiers tried to extricate themselves, they were besieged by hundreds of villagers. At that point, they fired their weapons and managed to keep the mob off until reinforcements arrived. There was no indication of what precipitated the incident. An official investigation is being conducted.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
