A new armed attack killed at least two people and injured many on Thursday evening, April 7, in the center of the Israeli metropolis Tel Aviv. The Magen David Adom, the equivalent of the Israeli Red Cross, said in a brief message that it treated several injured, some of whom were in critical condition and were transferred to Ichilov Hospital.
But soon after, the same hospital reported two dead and eight injured in the attack – the second in nine days in the Tel Aviv area and the fourth in less than three weeks in Israel. The precise motive for the attack was not yet clearly established.
On Thursday evening, witnesses on the spot told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that they heard gunshots and saw scenes of chaos in the center of Tel Aviv where the Israeli police said they were deployed. “It’s a war atmosphere, soldiers and police everywhere…they have searched the restaurant, people are crying and running in all directions”a witness, who works in a restaurant near the scene of the attack, told AFP.
In a press release, the security forces asked the population not to go outside, in order to avoid being the target of fire. ‘Police are calling on people to stay home and allow forces to deal with the incident which is still ongoing, in order to locate suspects’she said in a statement.
Fourth attack in three weeks in the country
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is, for his part, at army headquarters in Tel Aviv, where he receives the latest information on the shooting, his services said. Last week, a Palestinian from the occupied West Bank opened fire on crowds driving through the Jewish-Orthodox town of Bnei Brak, near Tel Aviv, killing five people, including two Ukrainians and an Israeli Arab policeman.
A few days earlier, two police officers, including a young Franco-Israeli, had been killed in a shootout claimed by the jihadist organization Islamic State (IS) in Hadera (north). On March 22, in Beersheva, a large city in the Negev desert (south), four Israelis were killed in a stabbing and car-ramming attack perpetrated by a teacher, sentenced in 2016 to four years in prison for having planned to go to Syria, in order to fight within the IS.
In the aftermath of these attacks, the Israeli army, police and internal security services arrested dozens of people suspected of links with IS in Israel and increased operations in the occupied West Bank, in particular in Jenin, northern sector of this Palestinian territory from which the assailant of the Bnei Brak attack originated.
At least three members of the Islamic Jihad, the second Palestinian armed Islamist movement after Hamas, were killed last week during exchanges of fire in connection with these operations in Jenin.