A baby born prematurely to an Israeli mother who was wounded in a drive-by shooting in the West Bank has died, a Jerusalem hospital said in a statement Wednesday evening.
The four-day-old baby boy was delivered early at 30 weeks, just hours after the shooting at the entrance to the Ofra settlement that left seven people injured on Sunday. The baby’s mother, Shira Ish-Ran, 21, was critically injured in the shooting but is slowly improving.
“The murderers are abhorrent, the most deviant criminals on earth. The security forces are pursuing them and I hope that there will be news soon on this matter,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at an event in Jerusalem on Wednesday evening. “We will not slacken until we find them and deal with them to the fullest extent of the law.”
According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), shots were fired from a passing car toward people standing at a bus stop at the entrance to the settlement. Soldiers nearby responded by firing toward the vehicle, which managed to get away, the IDF said.
Israeli security forces have focused their efforts around the West Bank city of Ramallah as they look for the gunmen in the shooting.