Hizbullah financed cell
Photo: AP
Rocket cell nabbed in West Bank
In special raid by elite forces, Israel arrests 2 Tanzim fugitives in Tulkarm who headed terror cell that manufactured rockets and tried to launch them at Israel. Terror group was funded by Hizbullah, officials say
Security forces arrested two Tanzim fugitives in Tulkarm who were behind failed attempts to launch rockets into Israel from the West Bank.
On Saturday evening it was released for publication that a joint raid by the Shin Bet, IDF and an elite Border Guard force arrested the two suspects Hassan Uffi and Wataar Amara in recent days. The two, who led a Tanzim cell financed and directed by Hizbullah in Lebanon, were arrested in a Tulkarm refugee camp.
According to security officials, the cell led by the suspects was manufacturing rockets and its members had tried to fire the hand-made rockets towards Israeli land in early July, but without success.
Security officials told Ynet at the time that, “there is no doubt the terror organizations (in the West Bank) are trying to mimic the technology and knowledge in Gaza regarding high-trajectory weapons in order to threaten the Sharon area. All sorts of attempts have been made; some failed, some partially succeeded. There is no doubt these attempts will continue and may even be fruitful now or at a later stage.”
During the arrest raid, IDF forces discovered a weapons cache which included a 4-kg pipe bomb, an 8-kg explosive, three sacs of explosives weighing about 1.5 kg, two rockets at early stages of manufacture, and other weapons. All the devices and weapons confiscated were detonated in controlled explosions by sappers.
Sources in the IDF said that in the past few weeks, since the fighting in Lebanon started, that Hizbullah was focusing efforts to activate terror infrastructure in the West Bank. The cell busted recently is one such example, the sources said.
