At least nine people have been injured on a bus in central Tel Aviv – injuring four seriously – in a knife attack by a Palestinian man who was then shot and arrested while trying to escape.
The attack – which police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said was being treated as a terrorist incident – took place at about 7.15am on a number 40 bus crowded with commuters during the rush hour.
According to Israeli police, the man boarded the bus on Menachem Begin Road and stabbed the driver in the chest after the vehicle had travelled about 400 metres from the stop. The driver was identified as 55-year-old Herzl Biton.
Pictures of the weapon used in the attack showed a large kitchen knife. Its blade had been bent and its wooden handle broken off. It was not immediately clear if all of those injured in the attack suffered stab wounds.
“Shortly after he boarded the bus, the assailant stabbed the driver several times but … he resisted the attack and in this way the terrorist was surprised,” Tel Aviv police chief Bentzi Sau told reporters at the scene.
In their first comments after the incident, senior Israeli officials suggested there had been no warning prior to the attack and that it was unclear if the man belonged to a militant group.
A vehicle ferrying prisoners to a court hearing was following the bus and officers pursued the assailant as he fled into a nearby street where he was shot in the leg and arrested.
Speaking to army radio, one of the prison service officers involved, identified as Benny Botershvili, said: “We saw the bus swerve to the side … then stop at a green light. Suddenly, we saw people running out of the bus and when we saw them shouting for help, we jumped out (of our vehicle) and I and three others started running after the terrorist. At first we fired in the air, then at his legs. The terrorist fell, we handcuffed him and turned him over to police.”
Moses Collins, a witness who was in a bus behind, described seeing the bus in front swerving in the road and stop before a man ran out of it. As passengers on Collins’ bus got off, they could see injured passengers covered in blood.
Another witness told the Israeli news website Ynet: “We were in our car behind the bus. Suddenly we saw people getting off and running, screaming, and crying hysterically. We didn’t know what to do. We were scared he was going to come towards us. Several ambulances arrived and they just evacuated everyone.”
Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, did not claim responsibility but praised Wednesday’s attack as “brave and heroic” in a tweet by Izzat Risheq, a Hamas leader residing in Qatar.
The stabbing was a “natural response to the occupation and its terrorist crimes against our people”, Risheq said.
The incident took place after period of relative calm following a summer and autumn marked by violence in Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories.
The stabbing is the latest in a series of “lone-wolf” attacks that have plagued Israel in recent months. About a dozen people have been killed in Palestinian attacks, including five people attacked with guns and meat cleavers in a bloody assault on a Jerusalem synagogue.
Most of the violence has occurred in Jerusalem, though there have been other attacks in Tel Aviv and the West Bank. In Jerusalem, the violence followed months of tension between Jews and Palestinians in east Jerusalem, the section of the city the Palestinians demand as their future capital.
The area experienced unrest and near-daily attacks by Palestinians after a wave of violence last summer, capped by a 50-day war between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza.
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