A helicopter-directed police chase on the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway ended Tuesday with the capture of a van transporting a would-be suicide bomber carrying explosives meant for an attack in the center of the country.

The van was stopped next to Kibbutz Sha'alabim, near Latrun, a rural area midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, police said. The 10 men inside the vehicle were taken for questioning, and it was later determined that the prospective bomber was among them.

The arrests capped a 15-minute high-speed chase, complete with wailing sirens, roaring helicopters and heavily armed elite police commandos racing on motorcycles.

 

The terrorist is a resident of the Yamoun village in the West Bank and has ties to Islamic Jihad.

The bomb, which weighed between five and seven kilograms and contained high-quality explosives and shrapnel, was in a bag that could be worn as a backpack or carried by hand.

Security forces knew in advance the license plate number of the GMC van in which the 10 were riding, and had been told that there was a "very, very, very high probability" that it was tied to an imminent terror attempt, said Detective Shahar Hemo, one of the officers who stopped the vehicle.

Security forces also knew the make, model, and color of the car, he said.

Chief inspector Ofer Dror, deputy commander of the Harel police station, told journalists about the incident.

"As part of our response to the alert, we set up a checkpoint. A GMC vehicle pulled up at the Harel bridge next to Mevasseret Tzion. We signaled the driver to stop but he refused. We understand there were minorities sitting in the car. He drove hastily through the checkpoint and we started chasing him. During the chase, the driver endangered the safely of other vehicles. I called for back-up forces and a helicopter," Dror said.

Traffic was backed up in many areas of central Israel for extended periods of time. A checkpoint set up the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway created a 400-meter-long traffic backup.

"The driver saw the traffic jam, drove onto the shoulder and drove another 200 meters. He stopped in front of a truck stopped on the shoulder. With additional forces, we advanced with weapons drawn and surrounded the vehicle," Dror said.

Chief Superintended Oz Eliasi, commander of the Beit Shemesh police station, said: "We surrounded the vehicle with handguns drawn and shouted to the driver to get out. The windows were tinted do that we only were able to see the driver. He was afraid to get out and this clarified the situation that there was a bomb in this particular vehicle. We made sure he [the driver] was lying on the ground and then spotted another head sticking out. We called on everyone to exit the vehicle and aimed our weapons at them. Sappers entered the vehicle and found the bomb inside a bag."

"We were traveling along the highway, on a beautiful spring day ... and suddenly we saw a helicopter swoop down and anti-terror forces speed by," Yonatan Danino, a witness, told Israel Radio. "Suddenly we saw a car with security forces surrounding it. They even came out of the bushes."

Nearby motorists began to panic when police removed the bomb from the car

"People started to run away from the cars," Danino said. "Police were shouting into megaphones, 'live bomb, live bomb,' and people were running in every direction."

The bomb was safely detonated.

As traffic backed up, officers stripped and handcuffed the 10 suspects, forcing them to lie face-down on a roadside field.

Police believe the terrorist did not detonate his bomb inside the van either because he didn't want to harm other passengers or out of fear of being shot before managing to blow it up.

An investigation has thus far revealed that the attack was likely intended for the center of the country rather than for Jerusalem.

Jerusalem District police commander Major General Ilan Franco said the alert of this potential attack was received at 11 A.M., at the same time forces received another alert concerning a potential attack in the north of the city.

The van's driver, a resident of East Jerusalem, apparently operated a transport for illegal Palestinian workers seeking to enter Israel from the West Bank.

Four Palestinians wounded by IDF gunfire near Nablus
Israel Defense Forces soldiers operating in the Al-Askar refugee camp adjacent to Nablus shot four Palestinians throwing firebombs.

Two of the Palestinians were seriously wounded and two others suffered light wounds.

A short time after, IDF troops fired at two armed Palestinians.

IDF soldiers arrested a Palestinian youth at the Hawara checkpoint located south of Nablus on Tuesday. The youth was carrying two knives and three firebombs.

Security forces also arrested 250 Palestinians working in Israel without legal permits over the past 24 hours.