Israeli police on Saturday continued their manhunt for a gunman who killed two people and wounded several others when he opened fire at a bar in Tel Aviv the day before.
Police said they are investigating possible motives for the shooting, which came amid more than three months of near-daily Palestinian attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers. On Saturday they allowed his identity to be published.
Relatives of the suspected shooter, Nashat Milhem from the Arab village of Arara in northern Israel, told media they recognized the man from closed-circuit TV footage aired on news reports.
Photo: AFP
Family members said he was a troubled man who was “traumatized” after a cousin was killed by police in 2006, and who had served time in an Israeli prison after allegedly grabbing an officer’s gun. They said he acted on his own and called on the man to turn himself in.
Milhem’s father, Mohammed, said he was deeply sorry for what happened and wished the victims a speedy recovery.
“I did not educate him this way,” he said.
More than 24 hours after the attack, the shooter was still at large.
Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said police on Saturday remained on “heightened alert” and a large-scale manhunt is underway.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the scene of the attack on Saturday evening.
“The brutality was incomprehensible,” Netanyahu said.
He said that while many Muslims in Israel speak out against violence and aspire to uphold law and order in their communities there is “wild incitement by Islamic extremists against Israel in the Arab sector, incitement in mosques, and incitement in the education system and incitement on social media. We are acting aggressively against that incitement.”
He said there are “lawless enclaves” with “Islamist incitement” and weapons.
Police forces are to be beefed up in Arab areas, he added.
“I am not willing to accept two states within Israel, a state of law for most of its citizens and a state within a state for some of its citizens. That era is over,” he said.
“Whoever wants to be Israeli must be Israeli all the way,” Netanyahu said.
Israel’s Arabs, who make up one-fifth of the country’s 8.4 million people, enjoy full rights, but have long complained of unfair treatment in areas such as housing and employment opportunities. Many identify more with their Palestinian brethren in the West Bank and Gaza and with Palestinian nationalism rather than with Israel.
Well-wishers lit candles in commemoration for the victims outside the bar throughout the day.
The attack comes amid months of Palestinian attacks that have killed 21 Israelis, mostly in stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks. That figure does not include the victims in Friday’s attack as the motive for that attack has not officially been determined yet.
During that time, at least 131 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, 90 of them identified by Israel as assailants. The rest died in clashes with security forces.
Israel says the violence is being fanned by a Palestinian campaign of incitement. The Palestinians say it is rooted in frustrations stemming from nearly five decades of Israeli occupation.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to