JERUSALEM (AP) – A Palestinian attacker posing as a hitchhiker threw acid at an Israeli family in the West Bank on Friday before he was shot by a passer-by and arrested, the Israeli military said.
The Israeli family – a Jewish man, his wife and four young girls – were sitting inside a car when the Palestinian man hurled acid at the woman and the girls in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc south of Jerusalem, the military said.
The army said the Palestinian also tried to attack the father of the family with a screwdriver and then started to run away, but a civilian passer-by shot him in the leg. Israeli police arrested the man and evacuated him to hospital for treatment.
The Israeli family members sustained light injuries, the police said.
Acid attacks are rare in Israel and the Palestinian territories. In 2001, a Palestinian girl seriously injured a young Israeli woman when she entered a Jerusalem shoe shop and threw acid at a saleswoman.