Haifa police have arrested a Palestinian they say confessed to killing an immigrant from the former Soviet Union and wounding two Polish sailors.
The suspect, whose name was not released, was seeking revenge for beatings he claimed to have suffered at the hands of Israel Defense Force soldiers in his home village of Kabatiya in the West Bank, police said.
For the past five years, he has worked at a Haifa bakery.
He was arrested after allegedly firing at two Polish sailors in downtown Haifa on Tuesday night, seriously wounding one of them.
The incident occurred at the site where a new immigrant was shot to death Saturday night in front of his wife and two children. Boris Oshorov had arrived with his family two weeks before from Azerbaijan.
Police suspect that the accused believed the Polish-speaking seamen were new immigrants, too. Two other Arabs were detained as accomplices.
The man reportedly told his interrogators he fired at the two men four or five times until his bullets ran out. He hit Martin Yankowicz, 29, and Bogdan Balerski, 27, deck officers of the Polish ship Lagioana, which arrived in Haifa port Sunday with a load of wheat.
They were ambushed from behind a bush while walking down an outdoor staircase in the Hadar section of Haifa. The vague description they managed to give police of their attacker matched that given by Oshorov’s widow of a short man with “Middle Eastern features.”
The suspect was arrested shortly afterward about a mile from the scene.
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