At the height of Operation “Roaring Lion” and in broad daylight, Israeli forces yesterday, Saturday, blew up in the town of Dura near Hebron the home of Azmi Nader Abu Khalil, the accomplice of Izz a-Din Mallouh, the attacker who carried out the December 2024 shooting attack on Tunnel Road near the village of al-Khader, in which 12-year-old Jerusalem boy Yehoshua Aharon Tuvia Simcha was killed.
In reports on social media about yesterday’s explosion, Palestinians complained that since his arrest, days after the attack, Abu Khalil has lost 38 kilograms of body weight.
Both men were captured alive and are currently standing trial. The home of the main attacker, Mallouh, was demolished in June 2025, while the home of another accomplice was demolished in September 2025.
How was the accomplice’s house in Dura demolished?
According to Palestinian reports, large Israeli forces arrived yesterday morning in Dura and sealed the area around the Abu Khalil family home. Residents from 20 nearby houses were evacuated before the second floor of the three-story building — where Azmi Abu Khalil, 30, a lawyer by profession, lived — was blown up. During the operation, the suspect’s brother Muhammad interfered with the forces’ activity and was removed from the area using force.
How did the Tunnel Road shooting attack that killed Yehoshua Aharon Tuvia Simcha occur?
The attack in which Jerusalem boy Yehoshua Aharon Tuvia Simcha was killed took place on December 11, 2024. A bus of the company “Kavim,” line 291, was traveling from Beitar Illit to Jerusalem. Near the Tunnels checkpoint on Route 60, close to the al-Khader junction, automatic gunfire was opened toward the bus. The bus was hit by 23 bullets.
Among the passengers was Yehoshua Tuvia together with members of his family, returning to Jerusalem from a family event. The boy was critically wounded and evacuated to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem, where doctors fought for his life for three days before being forced to pronounce his death.
Yehoshua Aharon Tuvia Simcha was laid to rest at the Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem. Three other passengers were injured in the attack in varying degrees of severity.
At the end of July 2025, an emotional ceremony was held at the “Klall Hasidi” yeshiva in Beitar Illit, where Yehoshua studied and where his father, Rabbi Zusha Simcha, serves as head of the yeshiva, marking the beginning of writing a Torah scroll in his memory. The project was initiated by a young ultra-Orthodox man who had also been on the bus that night and survived when a bullet grazed his forehead.
