An attack claimed by the Islamic State (IS) left two dead and several injured Sunday in the city of Hadera, Israel. The two victims are members of the police, and one of them had dual French and Israeli nationality, says the French embassy in Tel Aviv. “We can confirm Shirel Aboukrat’s dual Israeli and French nationality. The French Ambassador to Israel, Eric Danon, stands alongside his bereaved parents and loved ones,” tweeted the embassy, stating that the young woman, aged 19, was born in Marseille, in the south of France. Yezen Falah, the other policeman killed in the attack, is also a 19-year-old Druze.
IS said in a statement that two of its members were responsible for the shooting. Israeli police identified the attackers as two Israeli Arabs known to Israeli intelligence as local ISIS operatives. Footage from surveillance cameras in Hadera, a city located between Tel Aviv and Haifa, shows two men opening fire with automatic weapons in a street where cars are driving, before heading for the sidewalk.
Knife attack and car ram
“Two members of the Border Police counter-terrorism units who were in a restaurant very close to the scene of the attack came out and [tué] the assailants”, an Israeli security source said. The attack comes as Israel hosts an unprecedented meeting on Sunday and Monday of heads of diplomacy from the United States, Egypt, the Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco in a locality in the Negev desert.
On Tuesday, two men and two women were killed in another stabbing and ramming attack in Beersheva. The assailant was a teacher from the Negev, sentenced in 2016 to four years in prison for planning to travel to Syria to fight in the IS group and for preaching his apology.