The police confirmed they had surrounded a building in which he had been hiding in Arara. When he stepped out and intuitively tried to escape.
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Nashat Melhem was suspected of being the gunman who shot and killed two people at a bar in central Tel Aviv and wounded seven others. He was killed when police returned fire.
Abu Toameh was the first to tweet in English about Melhem’s initially becoming number 150 on the PA Health Ministry’s regular updates of the number and identity of Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces during the current surge in violence.
On the Israeli side, 25 people have been killed, mostly in stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks.
One Israeli Arab was also shot dead after carrying out an attack at a bus station in southern Israel in October in which an Israeli soldier was killed.
After security personnel had located Nashat Melhem at his home village of Arara in northern Israel, the fugitive opened fire with a sub-machine gun and was killed in the ensuing exchange. Relatives had identified him from CCTV footage of the Tel Aviv incident, where he was accused of killing three people in an attack whose motive remains unclear.
“I was sitting on my balcony with my cousin… when suddenly shooting began, hundreds of bullets, like in a war”, he said.
According to Channel 2, the breakthrough in the case came two days ago, when police found a personal item of Melhem’s near Umm al-Fahm, which helped narrow the search.
Cab driver Ayman Shaaban was from Lod, a mixed town north of Tel Aviv.
“All those who would murder Israelis should know that sooner or later we will find them, inside and outside the borders of the State of Israel”, Netanyahu said.
Following that shooting spree police launched a manhunt for the perpetrator.
Milhem served time in an Israeli prison after being convicted of attacking a soldier and trying to steal his weapon.
Unrest has since spread throughout the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Palestinian communities in Israel.
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There are no reported injuries among agents and special forces involved in the clash. These figures do not include Milhelm’s victims.
