Knives recovered from the backpacks of two 13-year-old girls who perpetrated a terrorist attack on Thursday in Ramla, Israel. Photo: Israel Police.

JNS.org – Two 13-year-old girls stabbed an Israeli security guard near the central bus station in Ramla on Thursday. During the course of their interrogation, one of the girls declared, “We came to kill Jews.”

The girls, one a longtime resident of an Arab neighborhood in the mixed Jewish-Arab city and the other a member of the Bedouin community in southern Israel who recently moved to Ramla, approached a metal detector checkpoint wearing their school backpacks. When the guard manning the checkpoint asked them for identification, the two girls pulled out knives from their backpacks and stabbed him in the leg and the arm. The guard, age 25, sustained light injuries.

Ramla Mayor Yoel Lavi rushed to defend his mixed city, saying Thursday, “We are talking about two minors who have been arrested and the police are currently investigating the circumstances of the attack. This incident is not typical of the Arab sector in Ramla. Ramla is a multicultural city where Jews live alongside Arabs in coexistence and good neighborly relations. We will continue to maintain good neighborly relations regardless of sector. The school system has been instructed to initiate dialogue on the issue in schools.”