Israel: Four dead in stabbing and ramming attack

Published on: 03/22/2022 – 18:50 Four people were stabbed to death on Tuesday in Beer Sheva, in southern Israel, by a man who was then shot dead by a passerby, according to police and emergency services sources. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has placed security forces across the country on “high alert”. Four people were killed Tuesday (March 22nd) in a stabbing and ramming attack by a man in Beer Sheva, the main city in the Negev desert in southern Israel, rescuers said. Police say Israeli suspect, who has not been identified, stabbed a woman at a gas station, then ran his car over a cyclist before continuing on to a nearby shopping mall. He then got out of his vehicle to stab a man and a woman. Civilians present on the spot opened fire in the direction of the assailant and “neutralized” him, added the Israeli police without specifying whether the man was still alive. , the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross, reported at least one death at first, then three, before raising the death toll to four, the spokesman for the organization told AFP. organization, Zaki Heller. The nationality of the victims was not immediately specified.Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who had just returned from a summit in Egypt with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and the de facto ruler of the Arab Emirates states, Mohammed bin Zayed, held “consultations” with the public security minister and police chief after the attack, his office in Jerusalem said. victims, hailed the “courage” of the civilians who opened fire on the assailant in order to “avoid even more victims”. The Prime Minister added that the security forces throughout the country were in “high alert”. Without claiming responsibility for the attack, a spokesman for the armed Islamist movement Hamas, Hazem Qassem, affirmed on the airwaves of the radio “The voice of Al-Aqsa” that this “operation is a response to the policy of ethnic displacement practiced” by Israel against “the Palestinian people inside the occupied territories”. Beginning in October 2015 and for months, Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and Israel have been the scene of anti-Israeli stabbing attacks most often committed by young people Isolated Palestinians. While such attacks have since declined, they continue to occur sporadically, usually in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, two Palestinian territories occupied by Israel. The city of Beersheba, and the Negev desert in general, have been largely spared these attacks but have been plagued on occasion by clashes between Bedouin minority protesters and Israeli police forces. Knife attacks rarely target civilians in Israel but more generally target Israeli forces , who in most cases end up injured. On March 7, a Palestinian assailant armed with a knife stabbed two Israeli police officers in the Old City of Jerusalem , located in the Palestinian part occupied and annexed by the Jewish State. He was killed and the two police officers slightly injured. With AFP