A Palestinian stabbed and injured an Israeli police officer in East Jerusalem before being killed. The police officer, hit in the chest, was taken to hospital. His condition is “serious, but stable” according to Tsedek hospital. A stabbing attack which comes days after the intensification of Israel’s offensive on Gaza.
A Palestinian stabbed and injured an Israeli police officer before being “neutralized” in East Jerusalem, an area occupied and annexed by Israel, according to a police statement released Monday. Israeli police said a “suspect” had “stabbed a police officer near the Mendelbaum gas station on Route 1 in Jerusalem.” “The forces pursued the suspect and neutralized him,” the statement added.
The injured police officer is in “serious, but stable” condition.
Police later clarified that the attacker was a Palestinian from East Jerusalem. Shaare Tsedek hospital, where the injured police officer was transported, said it had received a man in his thirties who had received “stab wounds to the torso” and was in “serious but stable condition.” . The attack came as Israeli forces intensified their ground offensive in the Palestinian territory of Gaza in retaliation for the October 7 Hamas attacks that authorities say killed 1,400 people in Israel, most of them civilians.
The Health Ministry of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip says more than 8,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Israeli bombardments since the conflict began on October 7. The situation in the West Bank, occupied since 1967 by Israel, is also extremely tense: nearly 120 Palestinians have been killed there by fire from Israeli soldiers or settlers since the start of the war between Hamas and Israel.