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Two Israelis, including baby girl, killed in Rosh Hashana attack

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  • Two Israelis, including baby girl, killed in Rosh Hashana attack

    Two Israelis were murdered, including a baby girl, and two others seriously wounded Friday night in a shooting attack on the settlement of Negohot, near the West Bank city of Hebron.

    The names of the two attack victims were released Sunday evening. They are Eyal Yeberbaum, 27, a resident of Negahot; and the baby Shaked Avraham, 7-months-old.

    Yeberbaum was laid to rest at midnight in Rehovot.

    Shaked Avraham will be laid to rest Monday at 3PM at the Kfar Hara'a cemetary near Hadera.

    The attack came as Israelis began celebrating the Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashanah on Friday evening.

    The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack. The terrorist has been identified as 22-year-old Mahmoud Hamedan from the village of
    Durrah, south of Hebron.

    Hamedan was released from an Israeli prison two months ago, after serving a 14 month
    sentence.

    Israel Radio reported the attacker appeared to have been a lone gunman who got through the fence of the isolated settlement.

    "To our regret, we have two killed and two more slightly wounded," said Dror Richter, spokesman for Israel's ambulance services.

    According to reports a Palestinian gunman broke into the settlement and made his way to one of the caravans there. The attacker knocked on the door of the home inside which a Jewish family and guests were sitting down to Rosh Hashana dinner. Yeberbaum, armed with a handgun, opened the door and was shot and critically wounded. He died a short time later.

    The owner of the house and a visiting soldier picked up their weapons and fired at the gunman, who peppered the caravan with bullets while trying to escape. One of the bullets sailed through the caravan and hit a seven-month-old baby girl who was sitting in her pram. The baby was critically wounded and died a short while later.

    An army reserve unit protecting the settlement was also sitting down to dinner at the time the first shots rang out. The soldiers left the dining hall and rushed to the caravans, where they spotted the terrorist. At first, the reservists thought the man was a settler, as he was wearing civilian clothing and was carrying an M-16 with telescopic sight. The soldiers called on the man to take cover inside one of the caravans, but he turned to them, yelled Allah HuAkbar (God is great) and opened fire on them. The soldiers returned fire and killed the terrorist.

    Holiday celebrations across Israel were marked by heavy security, with thousands of officers deployed at synagogues, parks and intersections to try to prevent attacks by Palestinian terrorists.

    It is the first fatal attack since Israel announced its intention to remove Yasser Arafat. Government officials blamed Yasser Arafat's
    Palestinian Authority for not stopping such
    violence.

    "We have information that the Palestinian
    Authority has not been doing anything in the
    last few days to deter these terrorist
    organizations from carrying out their
    atrocities during the religious holidays," said
    Avi Pazner, an Israeli government spokesman.

    One senior diplomatic official said the attack, claimed by Islamic Jihad, was an attempt by that organization to show it is still "alive and well" despite the bettering it has taken by the IDF in recent weeks.

    The official said the attack, coming on the eve of the establishment of a new Palestinian government, doesn't bode well for the future. "One would expect that a new government, at least while it is in the process of being formed, would try to stop attacks. If this government is a puppet government for Arafat, then we are likely to see more of these attacks."

    Regarding Arafat, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in a Yediot Ahronot interview Friday that the decision to remove him essentially cancelled the promise he gave President George W. Bush not to harm Arafat.

    "Today the Americans also know that as long as that man is in the area, there is no chance of reaching an agreement. The government decision canceled out the commitment I gave."

    Sharon said it is "very difficult to guarantee that if you grab and take him, he will not be harmed. In any event we will have to take American considerations into account. It is possible that their estimation that this will cause them problems in the Middle East is correct. They are mainly concerned about Iraq."
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