They were the most wanted men in the country. Security forces in Israel have captured four of the six Palestinians who had escaped from a maximum security prison, a spectacular escape that made them “heroes” in the eyes of the Palestinians.
Since their escape on Monday (September 6th) via a tunnel dug under a sink and leading to the outside of the building, Israeli authorities have been conducting a manhunt in Israel and the Israeli-occupied territory of the fugitives’ home.
The four escapees were arrested about thirty kilometers from the prison of Gilboa in northern Israel.
Friday evening the 9th, two of them, Yaqoub Qadri, 48 years old, and Mahmoud Ardah, 45, who has spent his last 25 years in prison, was captured without resistance in the town of Nazareth after a helicopter chase, police said.
They are members of the Palestinian armed group Islamic Jihad. MahmoudArdah, the oldest detainee of the six fugitives, is presented by local media as the architect of the escape.
According to Israeli media, police were alerted by residents of Nazareth to the presence of two men looking for food in trash cans.
In the family house near the town of Jenin, on West Bank, a brother of Mahmoud Ardah told AFP that despite the “sadness“of his relatives after his capture, they were”happy that Mahmoud managed to get the prisoners to flee and be free for a few days“.
“Our fear is that he will be tortured, placed in confinement and that he will be prohibited from receiving visitors or speaking on the phone.“, added Mohammad Ardah.
On alert
Saturday before dawn, two other fugitives, Zakaria al-Zoubeidi, a former leader of the armed wing of the Fatah party and the best known of the six escapees, and Mohammad Ardah, a member of the Islamic Jihad, were captured.
They were arrested by special forces “while they were hiding in a parking lot“from a village about ten kilometers from Nazareth, according to the police.
After the announcement of the first two arrests, a rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian enclave controlled by Islamists Hamas but from which Islamic Jihad also operates. She was intercepted by the missile defense shield. In retaliation, the army carried out raids in Gaza.
On Saturday evening, a new rocket, also intercepted, was fired at Israel from Gaza.
In a statement, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett praised the work of the security forces after the capture of the four fugitives, stressing that the “maximum alert state was to continue until capture“of the other two.
They are two members of the Islamic Jihad from Jenin –Ayham Kamamji, 35, sentenced to life imprisonment for kidnapping and murdering an Israeli settler and Mounadel Infeiat, 26 years.
“Declaration of war”
Islamic Jihad said in a statement that the arrest of the fugitives would “not erase“their escape”heroic“, and warned that any attempt by the Israeli authorities to”if venger“on these prisoners would be equivalent to”declaration of war“.
The armed wing of Hamas said that “any prisoner exchange agreement should include the release of the (four) captured heroes“.
Israel wants to repatriate the bodies of two soldiers killed in 2014 in Gaza and two civilians, who entered the enclave of their own accord and have been detained since.
Israeli forces had launched a massive search operation with the army, police and security services to get hold of the six escaped Palestinians, and had deployed reinforcements in the West Bank.
Prison service images showed a tunnel under a large bathroom ceramic, at the foot of a sink, through which the inmates had fled. Outside, the police had located a hole dug in the ground.
This rare escape put the Israeli authorities in embarrassment.
But in the Palestinian territories, demonstrations, punctuated by clashes with Israeli forces, took place to salute these “hero“.
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