Stabbing attack in Tel Aviv followed by incident involving gunman outside settlement of Alon Shvut

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Five people have been killed and up to a dozen injured in two attacks by Palestinians in Tel Aviv and the Gush Etzion bloc of settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The first attack saw two Israelis stabbed to death outside a shop in Tel Aviv where a prayer service was taking place.

In the second incident, which took place a couple of hours later, a Palestinian gunman in a car opened fire on a minibus at a road junction outside the settlement of Alon Shvut.

According to an Israeli military spokesman, the gunman then drove towards another junction, where he intentionally rammed his car into a group of pedestrians before being shot by soldiers. Other reports suggested the gunman had exited his vehicle and was still firing when he was shot.



Three people were killed: an 18-year-old US national, an Israeli in his 50s and a Palestinian. Another eight or nine people were injured.

The attacks bring the number of Israelis killed in the past seven weeks of violence to 18. Eighty Palestinians, some of them assailants, have died in the same period.



A third man was injured in the attack in south Tel Aviv. He stumbled into the shop, and others inside blocked the door as the attacker attempted to follow him in.

A wounded suspect was arrested and identified as a 36-year-old Palestinian man from the Hebron area of the occupied West Bank, who had a permit to be in Israel and had been working in a local cafe.

Witness Shimon Vaknin told Israeli media that the prayer service had just begun when a man staggered in and collapsed on a number of worshippers.

“We were praying the Mincha [afternoon] services,” he recalled. “In the middle of the prayers, suddenly we saw a man fall down wounded at the entrance to the synagogue and behind him a man with a knife who was trying to get inside. Someone shouted: ‘There’s a terrorist!’” he said.

“We managed to close the doors and he tried to force them open. If he would have managed to get inside he would have slaughtered the worshippers. We used all of our strength to not let him inside and then he went on to the nearby shops to try and hurt someone there.”

It was the highest death toll in such attacks in a single day since the recent round of violence began seven weeks ago.

The current wave of violence between Palestinians and Israelis began amid friction over a Jerusalem holy site known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, where al-Aqsa mosque stands, and to Jews as Temple Mount.

Earlier on Thursday, three Palestinian women attempted to infiltrate an Israeli military post in the West Bank, the military said.