Initial interrogation of the five detained accomplices of Natash Melhem, the triple Tel Aviv murderer who died in a gunfight Friday, Jan 8, revealed that they were part of an Islamic State cell. After he went to ground in his home town of Arara in the Wadi Ara district, they guarded him and saw to his needs. The special police force which ran him to earth told him to surrender and shot him dead when he opened fire.When he was cornered, Melhem opened fire on the police with the same Specter M4 Falcon submachine gun with which he murdered Alon Bakal and Shimon Revimi outside a Dizengoff café on New Years day and the cab driver Amin Sha’aban near the Mandarin hotel in north Tel Aviv an hour later.
The Shin Bet issued a communiqué confirming the Dizengoff gunman’s death at the end of an intensive weeklong intelligence effort to discover his whereabouts. Details of the affair are still to come...
The high level of preparedness for a terror attack in Tel Aviv was lifted Friday evening five hours after it was imposed.
