A 9-year-old Israeli girl, Noam Glick, was wounded in the chest Saturday by a Palestinian in Psagot, a West Bank settlement located near Ramallah. She was evacuated to the Shaare Tzedek Medical Center in Jerusalem.
The girl was injured while playing in the yard outside her home. She said she was shot by a Palestinian gunman at very close range; however, authorities said later that they had not established whether her wounds were the result of a shooting or a stabbing.
’I went outside, and Noam told us there was an Arab there,” the victim’s father, Yisrael Glick, told Israel’s Army Radio. “I understood this was a security situation, dangerous to our lives, the most frightening thing that can happen to a family — that a terrorist came into the house.”
He said that he heard gunshots and was able to pull his daughter into the house. By the time he emerged from the house again with his weapon, he said, the attacker had fled.
‘The hospital physician, Dr. Danny Fink, said the girl’s survival is ‘’a miracle.” Her condition was initially said to be serious, but hospital officials later revised their assessment to "light."
The victim, who underwent surgery overnight, had a deep gash along the base of her neck and her upper chest area and was wounded in one ear, he said.
According to Noam Glick’s account, the distance between her and the attacker was basically “zero,” Fink said. “The wound does not look like a gunshot,” he added, “but there were testimonies that said there were gunshots.”
The perpetrator of the terror attack has likely escaped the area, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said Sunday.
The search was set to continue throughout the day, and Psagot residents were told they could return to their normal routine, after overnight fears that the attacker was still hiding out in the settlement.
Shortly after the incident, Israeli security forces entered the neighboring Palestinian town of al-Bireh, where the shooter was thought to have come from.
They began the search on the outskirts of the town, near a soccer stadium, and Palestinian security forces had been called in to clear the area.
Saturday night’s attack came two weeks after an IDF soldier was killed while on duty in the West Bank city of Hebron by an unidentified shooter. The culprit remains at large despite investigations by Israeli authorities. Another soldier, off duty, was killed near the West Bank town of Qalqilya that same weekend.
Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon urged Israeli peace negotiators to rethink current talks with their Palestinian counterparts.
He insisted that the Saturday shooting in Psagot proves "those who support terrorism" can not be trusted partners in peace.
"We must put an end to hypocrisy of the Palestinian leadership," he added.
Israeli President Shimon Peres, who spoke by phone with Noam's father, said in a statement to the press: ''There is no doubt that Noam is a victim of a terrorist attack. We have not yet found the perpetrator and are still searching. Any act of terrorism is shocking but I'm especially saddened when the victim is an innocent little girl who was sat at home.''
The father thanked the president and said: "Noam is in recovery and we hope that she returns to herself soon. We tried to act in the best way we could and we hope to return to our regular life soon."