JERUSALEM: A Palestinian assailant killed one Israeli and injured four others before being fatally shot by Israeli police near the entrance to a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site Sunday, police said.
Police said the attack took place near an entrance to a contested flashpoint shrine known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. Violence surrounding the site, which is considered holy by both faiths, has triggered previous rounds of fighting between Israel and the Palestinians, most recently in May.
Paramedics said one person suffered critical injuries, one suffered serious wounds, and three others were lightly injured. Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital later said the critically injured person died. The paramedics said the Palestinian attacker was confirmed dead at the scene.
Police said two of those lightly injured were officers and identified the attacker as an east Jerusalem resident in his 40s. Public Security Minister Omer Bar Lev told reporters the gunman was a member of Hamas’s political arm from the Shuafat refugee camp in east Jerusalem, and that the man’s wife left the country three days earlier.
The Hamas militant group praised the attack in a statement but stopped short of claiming responsibility, calling the incident a “heroic operation.”
“Our people’s resistance will continue to be legitimate by all means and tools against the Zionist occupier until our desired goals are achieved and the occupation is expelled from our holy sites and all of our lands,” spokesman Abdel Latif Al-Qanou said.
Dimiter Tzantchev, the EU ambassador-designate to Israel, said in a statement on Twitter that his thoughts were “with the victims of the cowardly attack in the Old City of Jerusalem” and condemned “this senseless attack against civilians. Violence is never the answer.”
Sunday’s incident was the second of its kind in Jerusalem’s historic Old City in recent days, but shootings are relatively rare. On Wednesday, a Palestinian teen was fatally shot after stabbing two Israeli border police.
In that incident, the two officers were hospitalized and the teen, identified by police as a 16-year-old from east Jerusalem, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Palestinians have carried out dozens of stabbing, shooting and car-ramming attacks targeting Israeli civilians and security personnel in recent years. Palestinians and rights groups contend some of the alleged car-rammings were accidents and accuse Israel of using excessive force.
Israel captured east Jerusalem, including the Old City and its Christian, Muslim and Jewish holy sites, along with the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. It later annexed east Jerusalem in a move unrecognized by most of the international community.
The Palestinians seek the occupied West Bank and Gaza for a future independent state, with east Jerusalem as its capital.
Israeli police shoot dead Palestinian who killed 1, injured 4
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Israeli police shoot dead Palestinian who killed 1, injured 4
Katz orders West Bank raid after deadly attack in Israel
- Friday’s stabbing and car-ramming attack in northern Israel triggered the minister’s action
JERUSALEM: Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz on Friday ordered the military to launch an operation in the village of Qabatiya in the occupied West Bank after it emerged that a Palestinian who killed two people came from there.
The minister instructed the Israeli forces to “act forcefully and immediately against the village of Qabatiya, from which the murderous terrorist emerged, in order to locate and thwart every terrorist and strike the village’s terror infrastructure,” Katz’s office said in a statement.
“Anyone who aids terrorism or sponsors and backs it will pay the full price,” it added.
BACKGROUND
Friday’s attack comes just days after Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian teenager in the Qabatiya area.
The military said in a separate statement that it was preparing to begin an operation in Qabatiya in the northern West Bank, which has seen repeated violent incidents.
Friday’s stabbing and car-ramming attack in northern Israel triggered the minister’s action.
The assault came a day after an Israeli military reservist dressed in civilian clothes rammed his vehicle into a Palestinian man in the West Bank, where violence has surged since the war in Gaza began.
“Preliminary investigation indicates this was a rolling terror attack that began in the city of Beit Shean, where a pedestrian was run over,” Israeli police said in a statement about Friday’s attack, adding that the victim was a 68-year-old man.
“Later, a young woman was stabbed near Road 71, and the suspect was ultimately engaged with gunfire near Maonot Junction in Afula following intervention by a civilian bystander,” it said, adding that the attacker was taken to hospital.
Both victims succumbed to the injuries, Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency services said in a statement.
MDA also reported that a 16-year-old was slightly injured when “hit by a vehicle.
The Israeli military said the attacker had “infiltrated into Israeli territory several days ago.”
President Isaac Herzog condemned the attack.
Friday’s attack comes just days after Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian teenager in the Qabatiya area.
The military has launched an investigation into the incident after footage emerged showing the teenager not posing any threat or throwing anything at soldiers who shot him.
The attack on Friday also came a day after an Israeli military reservist dressed in civilian clothes rammed his vehicle into a Palestinian man in the
West Bank.
In videos on social media purporting to show that incident, the victim is seen praying by the roadside when the soldier rams him with his vehicle.
