JERUSALEM: Israeli security forces shot dead a Palestinian man in annexed east Jerusalem on Saturday after he stabbed an Israeli civilian and tried to attack police, Israeli police and Palestinian medics said.
The assailant used a knife to stab a man near the city’s Damascus Gate and then “attempted to stab a border police officer,” police said in a statement.
“Police neutralized the stabber,” it added.
A spokeswoman for the Palestinian Red Crescent said police killed the Palestinian assailant.
Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency service said the stabbing victim was a 20-year-old religious Jewish man who was taken to hospital in “moderate to severe condition.”
The assailant was not immediately identified. Israeli public radio said he was a 25-year-old from the northern West Bank town of Salfit.
Footage filmed by a bystander near the Damascus Gate and widely shared on social media showed a man in jeans lying prone on a sidewalk as police fired shots at him.
The official Palestinian state news agency Wafa said the man was killed “when Israeli police officers opened fire on him at point blank range.”
Mohammed Hamadeh, Jerusalem spokesman for Islamist group Hamas which controls the Gaza Strip, decried the “deliberate shooting of a wounded young man lying on the ground.”
After the shooting, police fired tear gas near the Damascus Gate to disperse Palestinians gathered there.
The incident came after a Hamas-affiliated gunman fatally shot a Jewish tour guide in Jerusalem’s Old City before police killed him last month.
Days before that, security forces shot dead a 16-year-old assailant in the Old City who they said stabbed two police officers.
The Old City is located in east Jerusalem, which Israel has occupied since 1967 and which Palestinians claim as the capital of their future state.
Israeli police kill Palestinian assailant in Jerusalem: police, state media
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Israeli police kill Palestinian assailant in Jerusalem: police, state media
- The assailant used a knife to stab a man near the city's Damascus Gate and then "attempted to stab a border police officer,"
- A spokeswoman for the Palestinian Red Crescent said police killed the Palestinian assailant
Syrian government says it controls prison in Raqqa with Daesh-linked detainees
- Prison holds detainees linked to Daesh, and witnessed clashes in its vicinity between advancing Syrian government forces and Kurdish fighters
Syria’s Interior Ministry said on Friday it had taken over Al-Aktan prison in the city of Raqqa in northeastern Syria, a facility that was formerly under the control of Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
The prison has been holding detainees linked to the militant group Daesh, and witnessed clashes in its vicinity this week between advancing Syrian government forces and the SDF.
It was not immediately clear how many Daesh detainees remain in Al-Aktan prison as the US military has started transferring up to 7,000 prisoners linked to the militant Islamist group from Syrian jails to neighboring Iraq. US officials say the detainees are citizens of many countries, including in Europe.
“Specialized teams were formed from the counter-terrorism department and other relevant authorities to take over the tasks of guarding and securing the prison and controlling the security situation inside it,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
Under a sweeping integration deal agreed on Sunday, responsibility for prisons housing Daesh detainees was meant to be transferred to the Syrian government.
The SDF said on Monday it was battling Syrian government forces near Al-Aktan and that the seizure of the prison by the government forces “could have serious security repercussions that threaten stability and pave the way for a return to chaos and terrorism.”
The US transfer of Daesh prisoners follows the rapid collapse of Kurdish-led forces in northeast Syria. Concerns over prison security intensified after the escape on Tuesday of roughly 200 low-level Daesh fighters from Syria’s Shaddadi prison. Syrian government forces later recaptured many of them.
