Israeli security forces have arrested two men who they say have confessed to carrying out the March 11 massacre of five Israelis in the West Bank settlement of Itamar.
Investigators say Ehud and Ruth Fogel and three of their children – Yoav, 11; Elad, 4: and Hadas, three months – were all stabbed or shot to death by Palestinian terrorists from a neighboring village.
Two other children sleeping in the residence were unharmed. One of the perpetrators said he would have killed them as well had he realized they were in the house. The bodies were discovered when an older sister – 12-year-old Tamar – returned home from a youth event.
Both of the killers, Hakim Maazan Niad Awad, 17, and his 18-year-old cousin Amjad Mahmud Fauzi Awad, lived in the Arab village of Awarta, a little over one mile away from Itamar.
The pair, affiliated with the Syria-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), provided considerable detail about the terror plot and reenacted the crime for Israeli investigators.
Carrying wire cutters and knives, the Awads walked from Awarta to Itamar where they scaled the security fence. They broke into the home of the Fogels’ next-door neighbors and stole an assault rifle and a protective vest.
Then the men went to the Fogel home and killed Yoav and Elad. Ehud and Ruth Fogel struggled with the terrorists in the bedroom before being stabbed and shot to death. The Awads then left the house, only to return a short time later to steal another gun. At that point, the infant daughter Hadas woke up and cried, so the intruders stabbed her to death.
After murdering the five members of the Fogel family, the Awads walked back to Awarta and told Hakim’s uncle, PFLP member Salah Adin Awad, what they had done. He hid their firearms and told them to burn their blood-soaked clothing.