Tel Aviv (agencies)
Yesterday, the UAE Embassy in Tel Aviv condemned the terrorist attacks in the State of Israel, and expressed its sincere condolences to the families of the deceased as a result of the attack, as well as to the injured and their families, wishing them a speedy recovery.
This came as Israelis mourned yesterday two of the dead in a gun attack carried out by a Palestinian from the West Bank in a suburb near Tel Aviv, while Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warned of a “wave of deadly Arab terrorism.”
The number of victims in the three attacks in Israel within a week rose to 11, including two Ukrainians, a policewoman with French and Israeli citizenship, and an Arab Christian policeman.
Yesterday evening, the Bnei Brak suburb of Tel Aviv was the scene of an attack that killed four civilians and a policeman.
“The pain is great,” Bennett, who met the security cabinet yesterday, said in a tweet.
And he posted in a previous tweet that followed the attack: “Israel is facing a wave of deadly Arab terrorism.”
And the Israeli police stated that “an attacker armed with a rifle opened fire on civilians in Hashnaim Street in the suburb of Bnei Brak, which led to the death of a number of civilians.”
The attacker moved, according to the police, to “Herzl Street, and opened fire on other civilians, before the police neutralized him.” One of the policemen was killed in the shootout.
While no party has claimed responsibility for the attacks, and the name of the attacker has not been officially announced, local media reported that he is called Dhiaa Hamarsheh, 27 years old, from the town of Ya’bad in the city of Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank, and he is a former prisoner who spent four years in Israeli prisons. .
Yesterday, in an attack, a 32-year-old Arab Christian policeman named Amir Khoury, a resident of Nof Hajalil, was also killed, who died while trying to respond to the attacker.
According to the police, the other two dead were Ukrainians, “one of them is 23 years old, and the other is 32 years old.”
The police said that “the two Ukrainian dead arrived in Israel earlier, and they were not among the war refugees that Israel received.”
A Palestinian source said that the Israeli forces arrested a number of family members of the suspect in the attack in Bnei Brak, while the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club confirmed the arrest of about 30 Palestinians from different parts of the occupied West Bank.
Yesterday, the Israeli police announced the arrest of a Palestinian suspect from the West Bank, after he posted videos on the “Tik Tok” application, which “matched the terrorist attack in Bnei Brak.”
The police also said that they arrested an 18-year-old Israeli citizen from the Bedouin city of Rahat on suspicion of supporting ISIS.
Following the attack, the Israeli police deployed large reinforcements in the suburb of Bnei Brak, and the army said it had sent additional forces to the West Bank and its surroundings.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the attack, and said in a statement that “the killing of Palestinian and Israeli civilians only leads to a further deterioration of the situation.”
For his part, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken condemned the attack, which occurred one day after he left Israel, “with the severity of the terrorist attack, this violence is unacceptable.”
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also condemned the attack. “These acts of violence can never be justified and must be condemned by all,” said his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric.
The spokesman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, Ahmed Hafez, expressed “the deepest condemnation of all acts of violence and terrorism that target civilians,” and stressed “the complete rejection of all forms of violence and terrorism.”
Meanwhile, the Hebrew press praised the bravery of the Arab-Israeli policeman, Amir Khoury.
And Yedioth Ahronoth, the best-selling newspaper in Israel, published an article entitled: “The heroism of policeman Amir: he prevented a major attack and paid with his life.”
“The late officer Amir Khoury sacrificed himself heroically in order to save lives,” the Prime Minister said in a tweet through his official account, where he posted pictures of three of the dead, including a picture of an emir.
His father, Grace Khoury, said: “Only a month ago we bought him a house to move in after marrying his girlfriend. He was smart, and he graduated with a law degree.”
In Ben Brak, Shlomo Alperin, who participated in the funeral, said that he had witnessed the “most violent” attack in Tel Aviv and its suburbs for years.
“It’s scary to be in the street, and I’m going to cut back on my outings,” said Nita Levi, a mother of two, in Ramat Gan, next to Bnei Brak.
Last Sunday, a shooting took place in Hadera, killing two 19-year-old policemen. ISIS claimed responsibility for Sunday’s operation, in the first claim of an attack in Israel since 2017. The Israeli police confirmed the killing of the Hadera bombers.
And last Tuesday, an ISIS sympathizer killed four Israelis in a stabbing and ramming operation in the city of Beersheba.
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