Itongadol.- Officers find pipe bombs, gas canisters, explosives, and a detonator inside suspect\’s car.
Border Police officers stopped what they suspect was a potential terror attack Sunday, when they arrested a man at a West Bank junction they said was carrying an explosive device in his car.
The Border Police said mid-day on Sunday that the man pulled up at the Beitar checkpoint near Beitar Ilit in the West Bank and almost instantly the officers found something suspicious about the man. They asked the man, who apparently was wearing a wig and acting "in a strange manner" to stop the car, but he refused.
At this point, one of the officers reached inside to grab the keys from the ignition, at which point the man started driving, while the officer was still hanging halfway out of the window, according to the Border Police.
The officer however managed to pull his service firearm and cock it, and ordered the man to stop.
The man was arrested and handed over to the Shin Bet General Security Service for questioning. Inside his car officers found pipe bombs, gas canisters, explosives, and a detonator, according to a statement put out by the IDF after the incident.
The incident caused massive gridlock as police shut down traffic in both direction from the junction in order to send in sappers to handle the explosives.
At the moment its unclear where the man was taking the explosives, though one working assumption is that they were meant to be used for a terror attack in Jerusalem.