BICOM

An Israeli man in his fifties, a retired IDF colonel, was bludgeoned to death outside a property in the Jordan Valley area of the West Bank last night in what is suspected to have been a terrorist attack.

According to initial reports, the man and his girlfriend heard noises outside their residence near Moshav Shadmot Mehola. As he stepped outside to investigate, the man was assaulted with an axe and iron rods, by what his girlfriend later identified as two Arabic-speaking men. He was later pronounced dead at the scene. The woman managed to flee, sustaining light injuries from barbed wire, but was able to stop a passing car at around 1am according to Ynet and raised the alarm. She was taken to a hospital in Afula for treatment.

A large IDF force was then dispatched to the area and roadblocks were erected in an attempt to apprehend the attackers. A portion of the Route 90 highway in the Jordan Valley was closed. Ynet reports that security officials are treating the attack as a terrorist incident but are not ruling out other criminal motives. Jordan Valley Regional Council Chairman David Elhayani told Army Radio that the motive was likely nationalistic.

Last night’s attack is the latest in a series of recent incidents in the West Bank which have left Israelis either dead or injured. Last Saturday night, a nine-year-old girl was shot by an assailant just outside her home in the settlement of Psagot. She sustained light injuries and the IDF later arrested two Palestinian men suspected of the attack. Three weeks ago, an IDF soldier was kidnapped and murdered near the Palestinian village of Beit Amin. A day later, another IDF soldier was shot and killed manning a post in Hebron. Last week, former chief of IDF Central Command Gadi Shamni told Army Radio that “The events of the past month may lead to an escalation in the West Bank.”