Palestinian kills 1, injures 4 before shot dead: Police
JERUSALEM: A Palestinian assailant killed one Israeli and injured four others before being fatally shot by Israeli police near the entrance to a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site on Sunday, police said.
Police said the attack took place near an entrance to a contested flashpoint shrine known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. Violence surrounding the site, which is considered holy by both faiths, has triggered previous rounds of fighting between Israel and the Palestinians, most recently in May.
Paramedics said one person suffered critical injuries, one suffered serious wounds, and three others were lightly injured. Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital later said the critically injured person died. The paramedics said the Palestinian attacker was confirmed dead at the scene. Police said two of those lightly injured were officers and identified the attacker as a 42-year-old east Jerusalem resident. Public security minister Omer Bar Lev told reporters the gunman was a member of Hamas’s political arm from the Shuafat refugee camp in east Jerusalem, and that the man’s wife left the country three days earlier.
Palestinian media identified the attacker as Fadi Abu Shkhaidem, and shared an image of him wearing long black robes and a black coat and carrying a firearm similar to the one shown in police photos. He was a teacher at a high school near the Old City.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting that he ordered security forces to be on alert to prevent other attacks.
The Hamas militant group praised the attack in a statement but stopped short of claiming responsibility, calling the incident a “heroic operation”.
It later claimed Abu Shkhaidem as one of its members. “Our people’s resistance will continue to be legitimate by all means and tools against the Zionist occupier until our desired goals are achieved and the occupation is expelled from our holy sites and all of our lands,” spokesman Abdel Latif al-Qanou said.