A knife rampage at a shopping mall in central Israel left two men and a teenager seriously injured before police shot and killed their assailant. Photo courtesy of Israel Police/X
April 1 (UPI) — A knife rampage at a shopping mall in central Israel left two men and a teenager seriously injured before police shot and killed their assailant.
The attack occurred Sunday night after a “terrorist” armed with two knives arrived at the Friendly Shopping Mall in Gan Yanve, 6 miles east of Ashdod, and began stabbing people, inflicting “moderately serious” injuries on the three men, age 25, 20 and 17, Israel Police said in a post on X.
“A policeman and an inspector of the Gan Yavne municipal police department located the terrorist and neutralized him,” it said alongside a video capturing the incident.
The footage initially shows the suspect charging at a police officer stationed outside who tries to run but is tackled to the floor. The pair briefly grapple on the ground before a second officer rushes in and shoots the attacker.
Two other suspects were arrested in dawn raids on the Bedouin diaspora in the southeast of the country, who police allege aided and abetted the attacker, including driving him to the mall.
The pair were being questioned on suspicion of assisting hostile sabotage activity, transporting illegal residents and other offenses.
Police said the slain suspect was a Palestinian residing in Israel without residence permits.
Local media identified him as a 19-year-old man from the town of Dura in the southern West Bank.
Southern district police commander Amir Cohen said he had entered Israel from the southern West Bank via a hole in the security barrier, though authorities were investigating if he may have been employed illegally in the mall.
Earlier Sunday, a terror suspect was shot dead at Beersheba central bus station after stabbing an off-duty Israel Defense Forces officer.
The suspect, whom defense sources identified as a 28-year-old resident of the nearby Bedouin city of Rahat, was killed by another soldier at the scene.
That incident followed the March 14 fatal stabbing of an IDF noncommissioned officer, allegedly by another Rahat resident, an Israeli citizen formerly from the Gaza Strip, at a gas station north of Beersheba.