A 20-year-old Israeli soldier has been left seriously injured after being stabbed in central Tel Aviv.
According to police the assailant, a 25-year-old Palestinian from the West Bank city of Nablus, was in Israel illegally. He was arrested in a nearby apartment building, according to police.
The injured soldier is believed to have been in air force uniform when attacked outside HaHagana railway station on Monday. The stabbing – if confirmed as being motivated by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – would be the fourth serious attack in the last three weeks, following two deliberate hit and runs that claimed four lives and the attempted assassination of a rightwing Jewish activist. Those incidents occurred in Jerusalem.
The suspect in the Tel Aviv stabbing was provisionally identified by Israel’s Channel 2 as Nur al-Din Abu Khashiyeh, though that could not immediately be confirmed.
While details were initially unclear, a witness named Kobi told Israel Radio: “I got to HaHagana bridge with a friend and we saw a big man in a red sweatshirt stabbing a soldier twice, apparently someone from the air force.
“I stopped the car and we started to run after him, shouting: ‘Terrorist, terrorist.’”
Gilad Goldman, another passerby, told the Israeli website Ynet: “I got out of my car and saw him assaulting and stabbing the youth. I punched him in the face. He dropped the knife and began fleeing.”
Emergency services spokesman Zaki Heller said the victim was “very seriously hurt” in the attack outside HaHagana station, where footage from the scene showed medics trying to revive a man lying in pools of blood.
One of the paramedics who was first at the scene said the victim’s boday was covered with stab wounds.
Tel Aviv police chief Bentzi Sau said: “The first clear picture we have is that a soldier was attacked by a member of a minority group living in Nablus. He attacked him with a knife, stabbed [him] several times, and attempted to take his weapon.”
Tensions between Israelis and Palestinians have been high in recent weeks, following last summer’s war in the Gaza Strip and increasing frictions over access to a contested holy site in Jerusalem.
