A mother and daughter were driving in the northern Shomron (Samaria)  near the Dothan Hermesh Junction on Thursday when two armed Arabs forced them at gunpoint to stop and hijacked their car. During the carjacking, one of the Arabs fired his gun into the air before turning his gun onto the two women and pulling the trigger. The gun miraculously jammed, saving the lives of the two women.

The hijackers fled in the stolen vehicle in the direction of the village of Yabed. Yabed has been the source of many terror attacks and in May, Staff Sergeant Amit Ben Yigal was killed when a large stone was hurled off the roof of one of the buildings in which arrests of terrorist suspects were being conducted in the village

Shomron Regional Council chairman Yossi Dagan blamed the attack on reduced security.

“This event is the result of the removal of the checkpoints whose absence allowed the attackers to get away. In the name of easing the restrictions on Arab movement in the area, Israelis living in the area are attacked, including a mother and her child,” Dagan said.

“If the checkpoints had not been removed, they would not have been able to escape to Yabed and therefore would not have carried out the attack in the first place,” he added.