Six revellers attacked by Yishai Schlissel, recently released from prison after serving 10 years for stabbing three people at gay pride parade in 2005

A religious protester armed with a knife has run amok during Jerusalem’s gay pride march, stabbing six people – one woman seriously – in the worst incident of homophobic violence in the city in a decade.

According to eyewitnesses, the attacker – named by a police spokesman as Yishai Schlissel – had hidden himself in a supermarket and waited for the march to arrive.

They described seeing Schlissel, an ultra-Orthodox Jew who had been released from prison three weeks earlier after serving a sentence for stabbing several people at a gay pride parade in 2005, run screaming through the crowd in a central Jerusalem street, stabbing people at random before being overpowered by police.

An Associated Press photographer pictured Schlissel, heavily bearded and dressed in religious clothes, shortly before he began his attack, walking through the crowd with his hand inside his jacket apparently hiding a knife from view. Another image, taken seconds later, showed him running through the crowd pursued closely by police, holding the weapon aloft.

A paramedic named Hanoch Zelinger, who treated the wounded at the scene, said the woman had been seriously injured, with stab wounds to the back, chest and neck.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Yishai Schlissel is detained by police shortly after the attack.

The march, which attracts thousands of participants, has long been a focus of tension between Israel’s predominantly secular majority and the ultra-Orthodox Jewish minority, who object to homosexuality. While the event takes place annually without incident in the more gay-friendly business hub of Tel Aviv, in Jerusalem, where the religious population is more dominant, violence has erupted in the past.

Zoe Shoshei, aged 18, told the Guardian she was knocked over as the attacker stabbed a man she was talking to in the back. I saw him stab one man who was wearing heels and shorty shorts and the man I was talking to who was wearing ordinary clothes. He knocked me over. I saw he had a very big knife. He stabbed the man next to me in the back so hard it was, like, ‘I hate you!’” Noah Singer, 17, added: “He did it so hard. He was running and stabbing.”

Another eyewitness, Ayala Baker, 20, said: “We were walking and singing. Then I heard a girl screaming really loudly. I turned and saw people running. I saw a guy running and the cops chasing him. I was really scared. There were people hurt. I saw his eyes. They were just filled with hate.”



Images in the Israeli media showed the moment that Schlissel, held down by several police, was arrested.

The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, condemned the attack “as a most serious incident”. “In the state of Israel, the individual’s freedom of choice is one of basic values. We must ensure that in Israel, every man and woman lives in security in any way they choose. That’s how we acted in the past and how we’ll continue to act. I wish the wounded a speedy recovery,” he said in a statement.

Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, also quickly condemned the attack. “We came together today for a festive event, but the joy was shattered when a terrible hate crime occurred here in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel. People celebrating their freedom and expressing their identity were viciously stabbed.

“We must not be deluded: a lack of tolerance will lead us to disaster. We cannot allow such crimes, and we must condemn those who commit and support them. I wish the injured a full and speedy recovery.”

Schlissel, who lives in Modiin Ilit, a settlement in the West Bank, stabbed three participants in the 2005 gay pride march and was recently released from prison after serving 10 years of a 12-year sentence for attempted murder. According to Israeli media, after his release he had distributed handwritten pamphlets calling on “all Jews faithful to God” to risk “beatings and imprisonment” for the sake of preventing the parade.

On Thursday, a Jerusalem police spokesman, Asi Ahroni, said there was a “massive presence” of police securing the parade but “unfortunately the man managed to pull out a knife and attack”.

The parade continued after the wounded were taken to a hospital, with protesters chanting, “End the violence.”

Oded Fried, the head of a leading gay rights group, said the attack would not deter the movement. “Our struggle for equality only intensifies in the face of such events,” he said.

Another attack on Israel’s homosexual community occurred in 2009 when a gunman attacked a centre for young gay people in Tel Aviv, killing two and wounding 15 others. The Jewish state repealed a ban on consensual same-sex sexual acts in 1988.