The West Bank town of Halhoul was placed under curfew as a large scale manhunt got underway for the attackers of an Egged bus in the vicinity last night.
A woman passenger suffered slight injuries from flying glass but no one else was hurt when the bus came under automatic fire between Hebron and Halhoul. The bus, enroute from Jerusalem to Kiryat Arba, sustained considerable damage.
The attack was linked to the date, May 15, which, by the Western calendar is the day after Israel proclaimed its independence in 1948. The last attack on an Israeli bus in the West Bank occurred on March 30, “Land Day,” when Arabs protested the confiscation of Arab-owned land in Galilee by the Israeli authorities in 1976.
Jewish settlers, outraged by the attacks and the failure to capture the perpetrators, held an emergency meeting today during which they accused the security forces of laxity.
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