Six dead in Tel Aviv gun, knife attack: Israel police

Members of the Israeli police's forensics department document the scene of a shooting attack in Jaffa, south of Tel Aviv on October 1, 2024. (AFP)
Short Url
Updated 02 October 2024
Follow

Six dead in Tel Aviv gun, knife attack: Israel police

  • Police described the attack as a shooting and stabbing attack that occurred shortly before Iran fired a barrage of some 180 missiles at targets around Tel Aviv

TEL AVIV: At least six people were killed in a suspected attack in Israel’s commercial hub Tel Aviv on Tuesday, police said, adding the two assailants had been “neutralized.”
Police described the attack as a shooting and stabbing attack that occurred shortly before Iran fired a barrage of some 180 missiles at targets around Tel Aviv.
“Six civilians were killed in a stabbing and shooting terror attack and nine civilians were injured with varying degrees of injury according to medical sources,” police said in a statement.
The attack began when two gunmen attacked passengers on the city’s light rail network and then fled on foot before being “neutralized” by police and citizens present using personal firearms, the statement said.
Footage posted online showed people lying on the street in Tel Aviv following the attack.
No group has claimed responsibility.


Libya’s security authorities free more than 200 migrants from ‘secret prison’, two security sources say

Updated 58 min 33 sec ago
Follow

Libya’s security authorities free more than 200 migrants from ‘secret prison’, two security sources say

  • Security authorities had found an underground prison, nearly three meters deep, which the sources said was run by a Libyan human trafficker

BENGHAZI: Libya’s security authorities have freed more than 200 migrants from what they described as a secret prison in the town of Kufra in the southeast of the country after they ​were held captive in inhuman conditions, two security sources from the city told Reuters on Sunday.
The security sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the security authorities had found an underground prison, nearly three meters deep, which the sources said was run by a Libyan human trafficker.
One of the sources said this person had not yet been detained.
“Some of the freed migrants were ‌held captive up ‌to two years in the underground cells,” ‌this ⁠source ​said.
The ‌other source said what the operation had found was “one of the most serious crimes against humanity that has been uncovered in the region.”
“The operation resulted in a raid on a secret prison within the city, where several inhumane underground detention cells were uncovered,” one of the sources added.
The freed migrants are from sub-Saharan Africa, mainly from Somalia ⁠and Eritrea, including women and children, the sources said. Kufra lies in eastern Libya, ‌about 1,700 kilometers (1,000 miles) from the capital ‍Tripoli.
Libya has become a transit ‍route for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe via dangerous ‍routes across the desert and over the Mediterranean since the toppling of Muammar Qaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011.
The oil-based Libyan economy is also a draw for impoverished migrants seeking work, but security throughout the ​sprawling country is poor, leaving migrants vulnerable to abuses.
At least 21 bodies of migrants were found in a ⁠mass grave in eastern Libya last week, with up to 10 survivors in the group bearing signs of having been tortured before they were freed from captivity, two security sources told Reuters.
Libya’s attorney general said in a statement on Friday the authorities in the east of the country had referred a defendant to the court for trial in connection with the mass grave on charges of “committing serious violations against migrants.”
In February last year, 39 bodies of migrants were recovered from about 55 mass graves in Kufra. The town houses ‌tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees who fled the conflict that erupted in Sudan in 2023.