Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warned of a “wave of murderous Arab terrorism” ahead of funerals yesterday for two of five people killed in a shooting rampage in an ultra-religious Jewish town.
The shooting on Tuesday in Bnei Brak, a coastal town outside Tel Aviv, of four civilians and a police officer was the third fatal gun or knife attack in the Jewish state in the past week.
Two of those killed were identified as Yaakov Shalom, 36, and Avishai Yehezkel, 29, both ultra-Orthodox residents of Bnei Brak.
Photo: Reuters
Two others were “a foreigner from Ukraine, aged 23” and “a foreigner from Ukraine, aged 32,” police said.
Diaa Armashah, a Palestinian from the West Bank village Yabad, had opened fire with an assault rifle in the center of Bnei Brak, killing the Ukrainians as they sat outside a shop, police said.
“From there he moved to Herzl Street, opened fire on civilians and was neutralized by police force,” they said.
Amir Khoury, 32, an Arab Christian police officer from Nof Hagalil who had responded to the attack was also shot dead, before Armashah was killed, police said.
Israel is home to about 15,000 Ukrainians, but since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the Jewish state has received nearly 20,000 refugees from Ukraine, an Israeli Ministry of Interior spokeswoman said.
Reports said that the two Ukranians killed had been in Israel for a while and were not refugees from the war in Ukraine.
Bennett, who heads an ideologically disparate coalition government ranging from Jewish nationalists to Arabs, said the country was “facing a wave of murderous Arab terrorism.”
The Israeli leader said that he planned yesterday to convene an emergency meeting with top security officials to review the situation.
Police said their forces were put on the highest level of alert, while the army said that it would deploy extra units in and around the West Bank.
“We unfortunately have to note that five people have died,” said Eli Bin, director general of the Magen David Adom emergency responders.
The funerals of Yehezkel and Shalom took place yesterday morning.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is based in the West Bank, issued a rare condemnation of the attacks.
“The killing of Palestinian and Israeli civilians will only lead to further deterioration of the situation, while we are all striving for stability,” he said in a statement carried by the Wafa news agency.
A shooting on Sunday killed two Israeli police officers — identified as Shirel Aboukrat, a French-Israeli citizen, and Yezen Falah — in the northern city of Hadera.
That assault was later claimed by the Islamic State group — the group’s first claim of an attack on Israeli territory since 2017.
Israeli police had said the two perpetrators of the Hadera attack were killed at the scene.
Hamas, the Islamic Palestinian movement that rules the Gaza Strip, praised Sunday’s attack as a “natural and legitimate response” to Israeli “crimes against our people.”
It was also welcomed by the Gaza-based Islamic Jihad militant group and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement.
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