JERUSALEM — A Palestinian gunman killed at least four people in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood outside Tel Aviv on Tuesday night, the la...
JERUSALEM — A Palestinian gunman killed at least four people in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood outside Tel Aviv on Tuesday night, the latest in a wave of attacks in Israel this month.
The shooting was the fifth attack in less than two weeks and has heightened fears of a wave of violence over the next month, as the rare convergence of Ramadan, Passover and Easter is expected to further heighten tensions between Israelis and Palestinians.
A spokesman for Magen David Adom, an Israeli emergency medical service, said colleagues counted four victims and were taking a fifth to hospital in serious condition.
The gunman arrived in Bnei Brak, a town east of Tel Aviv, by motorbike or scooter, before continuing on foot and shooting at passers-by with what appeared to be a heavy automatic weapon, witnesses said to Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster. .
A video released by Kan showed a gunman shooting passers-by and a cyclist with an assault rifle. At one point he shouted to a driver in Hebrew to “stop”, before opening fire on the car.
The shooter then drove to a second location nearby, where he was shot dead by police, a police spokesman said.
The shooter was a Palestinian from the northern West Bank who was jailed for six months in 2013 for arms trafficking and membership in a terror group, Kan reported.
A rescuer, Menachem Englander, who lives a few meters from the attack, narrowly avoided being shot himself after leaving his home on hearing the first shots.
“I immediately walked out into the street and saw a terrorist pointing a gun at me,” Mr Englander said in a statement published by Magen David Adom. “By some miracle, his gun jammed and he couldn’t fire.”
This is a developing story. Please check for updates.
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