Palestinian guns down 5 Israelis near Tel Aviv
Jerusalem, Mar 29 (EFE).- Five Israelis are dead after a Palestinian man armed with a rifle opened fire Tuesday on passersby in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak, authorities said.
Paramedics pronounced four people dead at the scene and a fifth died later at the hospital, according to Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel’s equivalent of the Red Cross.
The assailant, identified as Diaa Hamarsheh, 27, was fatally shot by police.
“Israel faces a wave of murderous Arab terrorism,” Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in a statement following the third attack in a week. “We will fight terrorism with an iron fist.”
Israeli television broadcast images of people gathered in the area of the shootings chanting “death to the Arabs.”
Hamarsheh lived near Jenin on the occupied West Bank and spent six months in an Israeli prison in 2015 on weapons and terrorism charges, Haaretz newspaper reported.
Hamas, the Islamist group that governs Gaza, hailed the shooting as “an act of heroism” and “a natural reaction to the crimes of the occupation against our people.”
While Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which claimed responsibility for the deaths of four Israeli civilians a week ago and two police officers last Sunday, said that “the resistance to the occupation will continue with all the force.”
Tuesday’s strike in Bnei Brak brought to 11 the number of Israelis killed by Palestinians in the last seven days, the highest one-week total since 2006. EFE
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