No Israelis were injured in the attack.
Kiryat Arba, located in the Judean Mountains in the West Bank, is the sister-city of neighboring Hebron, a flashpoint city that just this past Shabbat hosted a record-breaking 40,000 Jews.
The visitors arrived to make pilgrimage to the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in honor of the Matriarch Sarah, whose death was remembered in that week’s Torah portion read on Shabbat. In that section of text, the Bible records the purchase of the Tomb of Machpela in Hebron—another name for the site—as a burial plot by Abraham for his wife, a location which subsequently served as a burial place for himself and his descendants Isaac and Jacob, and their wives Rebecca and Leah.
A Palestinian man was shot dead last month while attempting to stab an Israeli soldier at the holy site.
