Israeli premature baby born after Palestinian shooting attack dies

An Israeli baby, delivered prematurely after his mother was wounded in a recent Palestinian drive-by shooting attack, died in hospital on Wednesday, Israel's Shin Bet security service said.

The mother, Shira Ish-Ran, was in the seventh month of her pregnancy during the attack at a bus stop outside the settlement of Ofra in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Sunday.

Doctors in the Shaarei Tzedek Medical Center delivered her son by an emergency Caesarean section, Xinhua news agency reported.

On Wednesday night, the Shin Bet said in a statement that the suspects who fled the scene had been arrested.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent his condolences to the bereaved family.

"My heart, our hearts, are with Shira ... at the death of a four-day-old baby who does not even have a name," Netanyahu said in an address to foreign media and diplomats in Jerusalem.

The shooting attack on Sunday was the latest in a spate of Palestinian attacks in the form of knife stabbing, shooting, car-ramming and others, usually targeting Israeli soldiers, police officers and settlers.

Late in November, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian man after his car ran over soldiers in the West Bank, injuring three of them.

Also in November, five Israeli policemen were lightly injured in a knife attack carried out by a Palestinian man inside a police station in East Jerusalem.

Palestinians have been struggling against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank since the 1967 Middle East war, and its blockade on the Gaza Strip since 2007 when Hamas took control of the coastal enclave after weeks of fighting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' security forces.

--IANS

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