On Monday, two Palestinian terrorists coordinated with each other to ram their vehicles into Israelis, with one of them knifing an elderly woman to death before the coordinated attacks injured 18 other people, five of them seriously, in Raanana, north of Tel Aviv,
Ahmed Zidat, 25, and Mahmoud Zidat, 44, neither of whom had a permit to work in Israel, had been caught in Israel several times and had served time in prison for illegal entry. Before he was arrested, one of the terrorists reportedly wrote on Telegram, “I have taken revenge. Allah Akbar.” One of the two terrorists possessed a forged identity card, according to Israel National News, which reported, “The terrorists began from the car wash where they worked. One found a car and removed a 70-year-old woman from it, stabbed her, and took the car.”
The elderly woman later died at the hospital. “A wounded woman who arrived in a critical condition after having been hit by a vehicle has died of her injuries despite our efforts to save her,” Meir hospital confirmed.
Seven children and teenagers were taken to Schneider Children’s Medical Center as a result of the attacks.
“We heard the noise of a crash, like a car bumping into another car,” Eden Arzi told Israel’s Army Radio, The New York Post reported. “We saw the driver go to stab a woman, and she ran away, and [the driver] went and stabbed a 60-year-old man while there were a bunch of screams in the background, until he fell on the ground.”
“[The suspects] went out together and in parallel, to two different locations, took two cars and launched a series of rammings,” Central District Police Chief Avi Bitton stated, adding, “This was a very grave terror attack.”
Shin Bet is interrogating the terrorists, one of whom declared that “when the war in Gaza started,” they “decided to carry out an attack and become martyrs… Initially, we intended to stab Jews, but then we decided to run over as many Jews as possible.”