Itongadol.- The relative quiet experienced in Israel on Sunday was broken in the evening hours when an Arab-Israeli attacker drove his car into a young woman and stabbed three other victims in a terror attack north of Hadera on Sunday evening.
Dep.-Ch. Jamal Hahrush, deputy head of the Coastal District of the Israel Police said at the scene Sunday evening that “an attacker driving a car, got out with a knife and stabbed four people who were taken for medical treatment.”
Hahrush said the attacker was apprehended by civilians and police and will undergo questioning, and that police were combing the area to see if there were any accomplices at large.
The attacker was later named as 20-year-old Umm al-Fahm native Ala Raad Mahmaid.
MDA paramedic Khaled Mora\’i and emergency medical technician Yehuda Haim arrived at the scene to treat the victims. "When we got to the scene, we saw in a ditch on the side of the road an unconscious 19-year-old woman who had suffered a multi-systemic injury. We gave her life-saving medical treatment that included CPR, treating wounds and giving liquids and quickly transported her to hospital."
The most severely-wounded victim is a 19-year-old woman who suffered severe internal and head and facial injuries and was taken to Hillel Yaffe Medical Center while unconscious and on a respirator, Magen David Adom paramedics said Sunday.
The medical center said later on Sunday evening that she was in stable condition.
The other victims include a 45-year-old man lightly hurt with stab wounds to his lower body, as well as a 14-year-old boy hit by the car and lightly to moderately wounded, and a 19-year-old man who suffered light to moderate injuries after he was hit by the vehicle.
Initially there were fears that attacker had managed to steal a firearm from one of the victims, but the gun was eventually accounted for at the scene.
The attack happened on a stretch of highway 65 next to a busy shopping center near the entrance to Kibbutz Gan Shmuel. Further up highway 65 are the Arab villages of the Wadi Ara, including Umm al-Fahm, which were the site of some of the most violent riots inside Israel during the Second Intifada, as well as the riots of October 2000, during which 13 Israeli Arabs were killed by security forces.