JERUSALEM: A Palestinian stabbed a police officer with a kitchen knife before he was shot dead in the Israeli port city of Ashkelon on Tuesday, police said.
Police said an officer began checking a person who aroused his suspicion when “the attacker pulled out a knife and attacked the officer.”
The officer “responded quickly, fired and neutralized the suspect, whose death was declared on site,” police said.
The officer was hospitalized with light wounds. The assailant was a man in his 40s from the flashpoint city of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, police said.
The attack comes amid a rising tide of violence among Israelis and Palestinians.
Four shooting, stabbing and car-ramming attacks in Israeli cities have left 14 people dead since late March.
Over the same period, Israeli forces killed 15 Palestinians, including assailants, according to an AFP tally.
On Sunday, Israeli security forces killed a Palestinian woman who stabbed a policeman in the center of Hebron, a powder keg where around 1,000 Jewish settlers live under heavy military protection among 200,000 Palestinians.
The same day, the army shot and killed an unarmed Palestinian woman who they said failed to heed warning shots near the West Bank town of Bethlehem.
The incidents came as Israeli forces round up suspects in the northern West Bank after a man from Jenin shot and killed three people in Tel Aviv.
Palestinian killed after stabbing Israeli police officer
https://arab.news/9jz7d
Palestinian killed after stabbing Israeli police officer
- Four shooting, stabbing and car-ramming attacks in Israeli cities have left 14 people dead since late March
- The attack comes amid a rising tide of violence among Israelis and Palestinians
Three brothers arrested over US embassy blast in Oslo
- The brothers, who were Norwegian citizens of Iraqi origin, had been arrested in Oslo and police were investigating the motive
- While none of the brother were previously known to police, Hatlo said investigators were not ruling out links to “criminal networks“
OSLO: Norwegian police said Wednesday three brothers had been arrested on suspicion of a “terrorist bombing” over a weekend explosion at the US embassy in Oslo, which caused minor damage but no injuries.
Police prosecutor Christian Hatlo told a press conference the brothers, who were Norwegian citizens of Iraqi origin, had been arrested in Oslo and that police were investigating the motive.
“We are still working from several hypotheses. One of them is whether this is an order from a government entity,” Hatlo said.
“This is quite natural given the target — the US embassy — and the security situation the world is in today,” he said.
Hatlo said the investigation would seek to clarify exactly what roles the brothers, who were in their 20s, had played.
“We believe that one of them is the person who placed the bomb outside the embassy and that the other two were complicit in the act,” Hatlo told reporters.
Oystein Storrvik, a lawyer for one of the suspects, told broadcaster TV 2 that his client had admitted “to being involved in the case.”
“He admits that he placed the bomb there,” Storrvik told the broadcaster.
Storrvik added that his client had been questioned by police.
“He has explained what happened, and I have no further comments at this time,” he said.
- ‘Proxy actors’ -
While none of the brother were previously known to police, Hatlo said investigators were not ruling out links to “criminal networks.”
In its annual threat assessment, Norwegian security service PST said last month that Iran, which it considers one of the main threats to the country, could rely on “proxy actors,” including “criminal networks,” to commit acts.
On Tuesday, Iran’s ambassador in Oslo denied any involvement by his country in the embassy explosion.
“It is unacceptable that we are being singled out,” Alireza Jahangiri told Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang.
According to police, the perpetrators of the bombing, described as “powerful,” may also have acted out of their own motives.
US embassies have been placed on high alert in the Middle East due to American strikes on Iran. Several have faced attacks as Tehran responds by targeting industrial and diplomatic facilities.
The blast took place at around 1:00 am (0000 GMT) on Sunday at the entrance to the embassy’s consular section.
On Monday, two images were released from surveillance camera footage showing a suspect dressed in dark clothing with a hood over his head and wearing a backpack.
Roughly at the time the incident occurred, a video had been uploaded to the Google Maps page for the US embassy.
The video, which has since been taken down, appeared to show Iran’s late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on the first day of the US-Israeli strikes in Iran.
According to Norwegian public broadcaster NRK, the person who uploaded the video wrote in Persian: “God is great. We are victorious.”
Police have also opened an investigation into this.
