West Bank ? Israeli forces disguised as vegetable vendors captured a senior Hamas operative who had been on the run for eight years, the army said Wednesday.

Israel has been hunting for Ibrahim Ighnimat, 47, for eight years and has doggedly collected information about him, said Lt. Col. David Kimchi, commander of the operation.

Troops followed Ighnimat for several days and learned his daily routine before the arrest in the village of Tsurif, Kimchi said. The “vegetable vendors” were used to get forces into the town, he said.

Ighnimat was sitting in the yard of his house when the soldiers arrived and tried to flee, but was arrested almost immediately, Kimchi said.

In another raid, the army arrested a 14-year-old Palestinian boy who told his interrogators that militants from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades – which has ties to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement – pressured him to carry out a suicide bombing after he quarreled with his father.