Israeli police gunned down a Palestinian gunman who fatally shot five people, including two fathers and one police officer, using an M16 assault rifle in a suburb of Tel Aviv on Tuesday night, the latest in a series of deadly attacks in the region in the last few days.
The brutal incident in Bnei Brak, which is a predominantly ultra-Orthodox city, has become one of the worst terrorist attacks in Israel in the last few years. It also comes as authorities have warned of a potential resurgence of violence ahead of Ramadan, a holy Muslim month.
Fatal Tel Aviv Shooting
In a statement released on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that the nation was facing a new wave of murderous Arab terror. The remarks come after two Palestinian citizens of Israel on Sunday shot and killed two police officers in the northern city of Hadera.
The attack coincided with a summit between Israeli and Arab diplomats that was held in the Negev desert. The Islamic State group, which is responsible for only a handful of attacks in the region, quickly claimed that they were the ones who conducted the shooting, as per the Washington Post.
Authorities later identified the gunman of the most recent incident as a 26-year-old resident of Ya'bad, near Jenin in the northern West Bank. officials believe the suspect was working at a building site in Bnei Brak and has previously served a short sentence inside an Israeli prison for a security offense.
The week following the shooting was considered one of the bloodiest in the history of the region and prompted fears that the Islamic State was plotting violence on a massive scale. Many believe that two previous attacks, carried out in Hadera and Beersheva, were conducted by the terror group's sympathizers.
According to The Guardian, witnesses at Bnei Brak said that the gunman suddenly began shooting at apartment balconies in the area and later pointed at people on the streets and one vehicle. During his rampage, Israeli police responded and fatally shot him. Video footage of the incident showed a black-clad slim man walking into a street while wielding an assault rifle as a bicycle rider made a miraculous escape.
Victims of the Incident
Israeli authorities also identified three of the victims, 32-year-old police officer Amir Khoury, 36-year-old Yaakov Shalom, and 29-year-old Avishai Yehezkel. The other two victims were reportedly foreign workers who have not yet been identified by Wednesday morning.
Khoury was found to be an Arab Israeli who hailed from the northern town of Nof Hagalil and served on the Bnei Brak police station's motorcyclist responders team. He was among a team of two motorcycle officers who caught up with the suspect and fatally shot him.
The shooting between the suspect and authorities resulted in Khoury being hit and later succumbing to his injuries after being rushed to the Beilinson Medical Center. After the incident, Israel Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai spoke with the victim's father. Khoury's father said they were a police family and that he himself was a veteran of the Tel Aviv police department, the Times of Israel reported.
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