At least two dead and eight injured in an attack in Tel Aviv

A new armed attack left at least two dead and many injured Thursday evening in the center of the Israeli metropolis Tel Aviv, where witnesses reported scenes of chaos. The Magen David Adom, the equivalent of the Israeli Red Cross, said in a brief message that it treated several injured, some of whom are in critical condition and have been transferred to Ichilov Hospital.

But soon after, the 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.

Thursday evening, witnesses on the spot told 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 an atmosphere of war, soldiers and police everywhere… They searched the restaurant, people are crying and running in all directions,” Binyamin Blum, who works at a restaurant near the scene, told AFP. of the attack.

Appeal to the public

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.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is on his side at the army headquarters in Tel Aviv, where he receives the latest information on this fourth attack in just over two weeks in Israel, said his services.

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 in Hadera (north).

And on March 22, in Beersheva, a large city in the southern Negev desert, four Israelis were killed in a stabbing and car-ramming attack perpetrated by a teacher sentenced in 2016 to four years in prison for planning to travel to Syria to fight for ISIS.

Arrests and operations

In the wake of these attacks, the Israeli army, police and internal security services arrested dozens of people suspected of having links with IS in Israel, and increased operations in the occupied West Bank, in particular in Jenin, sector of north of this Palestinian territory where the assailant of the Bnei Brak attack was from.

At least three members of the Islamic Jihad, the second Palestinian armed Islamist movement after Hamas, were killed last week during an exchange of fire in connection with these operations in Jenin.