Three Israelis killed in two terrorist attacks

This article originally appeared on The Media Line.

More than five weeks after the last attack in Tel Aviv, a terrorist stabbed and killed two people and wounded a third just outside a makeshift synagogue in a jewelry store. The terrorist, who was detained, is 36 year old and from the Palestinian village of Dura, near Hebron in the West Bank who did not have any previous offenses.

“Security in Tel Aviv has been stepped up,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told The Media Line. “We are also investigating how the terrorist managed to enter Israel.”

Initial reports said the attacker was in Israel legally and had been working in a nearby restaurant.

Eyewitnesses said that the stabbing occurred outside a Judaica store in the building that is often used for prayer services. The victims had just finished the afternoon prayer service when they were attacked.

The attack in Tel Aviv comes one year and a day after a stabbing in Jerusalem that killed five Israeli worshippers and a Druze policeman. It was not clear if there was a direct connection to the stabbing in Tel Aviv.

Witnesses said the man stabbed three worshippers as they exited the store. He tried to escape but was caught and held by witnesses in the area. They said he began yelling in Arabic.

Moshe Danonberg and Yonit Ninion, paramedics who arrived on the scene, told Ynet News that “it was a difficult sight. At the entrance to one of the businesses in the building a 32-year-old man lay unconscious, without a pulse and not breathing, suffering from stab wounds to his upper body. Next to him, a man in his 30s lay with stab wounds to his upper body.”

A third man was wounded in the attack. A Hamas spokesman praised the attack as “heroic” and called for more violence. He said he hoped it would convince Israel to return the bodies of “martyrs” killed while carrying out attacks in Israel.

It was the first such incident in Tel Aviv in over a month, when a young Palestinian man armed with a screwdriver stabbed a female soldier and wounded four more bystanders before he was shot and killed by an Air Force officer who happened to be on the scene.

Soon after the Tel Aviv attack, there was a second attack in the West Bank, near the town of Bethlehem. Preliminary reports said a terrorist opened fire from his car at an Israeli car at a major intersection, killing one person and wounding seven others. He then rammed his car into a nearby bus stop. He was shot and apprehended by security forces.

The two attacks came after weeks in which there were fewer Palestinian attacks, and almost all of them in the West Bank. With the exception of a shooting attack last week that killed Rabbi Yakov Litman and his 18-year-old son Netanel on their way to begin celebrations for their daughter and sister’s wedding, some of the attacks have not even gotten media coverage.

The wedding, which was postponed, is scheduled for next week, and the bride and groom have issued an open invitation to anyone in Israel to attend.

According to the Israeli government, since the wave of attacks began on October 1, 16 Israelis have been killed and 168 wounded, 20 of them seriously. About 100 Palestinians have also died, some of them while carrying out attacks and others during clashes with the Israeli army.