At least two dead and eight wounded in Tel Aviv shooting
A suspected Arab gunman killed at least two people and left three seriously wounded in a shooting in Tel Aviv’s city centre that Israeli police called a terrorist attack.
Mayor Ron Huldai said the shooting was suspected to have been carried out by an Arab attacker with “nationalistic” motives who entered a pub and opened fire.
The shooting, at the start of the weekend in Israel, came amid heightened tensions after a series of deadly attacks carried out by Palestinians. The militant Hamas group ruling Gaza praised the attack but did not claim responsibility.
Live footage from Israel’s Kan broadcaster showed police flooding the area and training their guns on the upper storey of a building. It also showed an explosion of some kind.
Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency service said it received reports of a shooting at “several scenes” around downtown Tel Aviv. It said it had evacuated six people to the nearby Ichilov hospital. The hospital said two people had died and it was treating another eight who were wounded.
At least one shooting took place on Dizengoff Street, a central thoroughfare. This street has been the scene of several deadly attacks over the years. Most recently, an Arab citizen of Israel shot and killed two Israelis and wounded several others on the street in January 2016.
The popular nightlife area was packed on Thursday evening, the beginning of the Israeli weekend.
Witnesses said they heard gunfire and saw scenes of chaos. “It’s an atmosphere of war,” said Binyamin Blum, who works in a restaurant near the scene. “Soldiers and police are everywhere ... They searched the restaurant, and people are crying.”
Eli Levy, a police spokesperson, urged people to avoid the area.
“A terrorist opened fire at short range and then fled on foot. Several people are wounded,” Levy told Israel’s Channel 13. “Don’t leave your homes. Don’t stick your heads out of the window. Stay off your balconies.”
More than 1,000 police were deployed in Tel Aviv, another police spokesman said.
The prime minister, Naftali Bennett, was monitoring the situation from the Israeli military headquarters, which is also in downtown Tel Aviv, his office said.
In Ichilov hospital, Mark Malfiev, 27, was being treated for a gunshot wound. He said he was passing by the bar when the shooting started.
“I saw the window shatter, people suddenly started running, and I felt getting hit in the back,” he told reporters from a hospital bed. “I felt a lot of blood. I saw blood.”
Tensions have been high after a series of attacks by Palestinian assai
lants killed 11 people just ahead of the holy Islamic month of Ramadan, which began nearly a week ago.
Last year, protests and clashes during Ramadan ignited an 11-day Gaza war.
Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian leaders have held a flurry of meetings in recent weeks, and Israel has taken a number of steps aimed at calming tensions, including issuing thousands of additional work permits for Palestinians from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Israel has worked to sideline the Palestinian issue in recent years, instead focusing on forging alliances with Arab states against Iran. But the century-old conflict remains as intractable as ever.
Hamas spokesperson Abdelatif AlQanou said late on Thursday that “the heroic attack in the heart of the [Israeli] entity has struck the Zionist security system and proved our people’s ability to hurt the occupation.”
On 29 March, a 27-year-old Palestinian from the West Bank methodically gunned down people in the central town of Bnei Brak, killing five.
Two days earlier, a shooting attack by two Islamic State sympathisers in the central city of Hadera killed two police officers. The week before, an IS sympathiser killed four people in a carramming and stabbing attack in the southern city of Beersheba. The Hadera and Beersheba attacks were carried out by Palestinian citizens of Israel.
The recent attacks appear to have been carried out by lone assailants, perhaps with the help of accomplices. No Palestinian militant group has claimed responsibility, though Hamas has welcomed the attacks.