Israeli officials have arrested an East Jerusalem resident over the bombings of two bus stops in the city last month.
The twin attacks killed two civilians, including Israeli-Canadian teenager Aryeh Schupak, and left 13 others injured.
The man arrested is 26-year-old Aslam Farouh, a Palestinian resident of the Kafr ‘Aqab area of East Jerusalem, Israel’s police and domestic security agency Shin Bet said in a joint statement released yesterday.
Mr Farou also has an Israeli resident card, meaning he is not subject to the same movement restrictions as most other Palestinians living in the West Bank.
“The Shin Bet, the police, and the army have arrested Aslam Farouh, suspected of carrying out the bombing in Jerusalem last month,” the statement read, referring to the two terror attacks on bus stops in the Israeli capital.
The Azrieli College of Engineering graduate appears to have had no prior criminal record and is the son of two medical doctors.
The November attacks were the first bombings carried out on Israeli civilians since the 2016 Jerusalem bus bombing.
“The suspect acted on his salafi-jihadi ideology, identifying with the Daesh organisation and acting alone after a long period of preparation in order to target Israeli citizens in Jerusalem,” the official statement added, referring to the Islamist militant group Islamic State or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) by its Arabic acronym.
The statement did not claim Mr Farouh was a formal member of the militant group, which conquered large portions of northern Iraq and Syria from 2013 onwards, but has since been reduced to pockets of control in Syria's eastern desert, and areas of Nigeria and Mozambique.
In the days after the 23 November attacks, security forces close to the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim located items used before, throughout and following the attacks, including a scooter, a helmet, and spare clothes, along with five further pipe bombs, which they said aided them in tracking down the alleged attacker.
The Shin Bet also found a makeshift submachine gun and an explosive device in Mr Farouh’s possession close to Ramallah, and said he would be formally charged in “the coming days”.
The bus attacks are part of a wave of terror in Israel that has not let up since Spring this year, with bombs, stabbings, and shooting attacks being met with dawn raids and arrests of militants in the West Bank.
