Israeli security personnel stand at the entrance to a shopping mall following a stabbing attack in Karmiel, northern Israel, July 3 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Avi Ohayon
An Israeli soldier was killed and a second person was wounded in a stabbing in an Israeli mall on Wednesday that police said was a suspected terrorist attack.
“A terrorist who arrived on foot entered the mall and stabbed two civilians,” said Shuki Hacohen, commander of the Israel Police’s Northern District. “One of them managed to shoot the terrorist and neutralize him. The terrorist was neutralized at the scene; the two injured civilians were evacuated.”
Israel‘s Ynet news site named the accused assailant, who was killed in the attack, as Joud Rabia from Nahaf, a town where members of Israel‘s Arab minority live.
There was no claim of responsibility from any group, though terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad in a post on the Telegram site described the attack as a “heroic operation.”
Closed circuit television images from inside the mall, in Karmiel in northern Israel, showed two men in Israeli military uniform, with their guns slung at their sides, walking casually through the mall.
In the CCTV images, broadcast by Israel‘s Channel 12 TV station, a man in a blue T-shirt could be seen rushing up from behind the two men, stabbing one of them in the neck area, and then stabbing the second person.
As the attacker ran off, the person who was stabbed first aimed his automatic weapon at the fleeing man, the images showed, then held his hand to a wound on his neck.
The Israeli defense ministry, in a statement, identified the stabbing fatality as Aleksandr Iakiminskyi, a 19-year-old sergeant in the Israeli military. He was pronounced dead in hospital, medics said. They said the other victim was being treated for his wounds.
Israel is conducting a military offensive in Gaza following the deadly Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 last year.
Violence in the West Bank, already on the rise before the war in Gaza, has escalated further, with stepped-up Israeli military raids and Palestinian street attacks.
In January, a Palestinian ramming attack in central Israel killed one woman and injured 12 others.
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