“Israel is facing a wave of murderous Arab terror,” Prime Minister Naftali Bennett wrote on Twitter after the shootings in Bnei Brak, a Jewish pro-Orthodox city on the outskirts of Israel’s commercial capital. The shootings brought to 11 the number of people killed by Arab gunmen in Israel last week, the largest sharp increase in attacks on the city’s streets in years. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register An amateur video broadcast on Israeli television shows a man dressed in black and aiming a rifle as he walks down a street in Bnei Brak. Israeli media outlets, citing unknown security officials, said the perpetrator was a Palestinian from a village near the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. In Bnei Brack, eyewitnesses said the gunman started firing on apartment balconies and then at people on the street and in a car. Magen David Adom’s ambulance service said it shot and killed five people. Israeli security and medical personnel protect the scene of an attack in which people were killed by gunmen on a main road in Bnei Brak, near Tel Aviv, Israel, March 29, 2022. REUTERS / Nir Elias read more “The terrorist was killed,” said ambulance spokesman Zackie Heller. Police said officers shot the gunman deadly. There was no immediate responsibility for the attack. Israeli officials have warned of an escalation of attacks ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, a time when violence has risen in the past, with East Jerusalem, which was occupied by Israel in the 1967 war, a hotbed of violence. “I was living on Hashneim Street in Bnei Brak and I was at home when I heard gunshots,” Medical Examiner Menachem Englander said in a tweet from Magen David Adom. “I immediately went out on the street and saw a terrorist picking up a gun. Miraculously, his gun was blocked and he could not shoot.” Last week, an Arab citizen of Israel killed four people in a knife attack and car bombing in the southern city of Beersheba, before being shot by a passerby. Israeli authorities have said he was a supporter of Islamic State. On Sunday, as an Israeli-Arab summit was being held in southern Israel, an Arab insurgent shot dead two policemen in the northern city of Khandera, about 50 miles (50 km) north of Tel Aviv. Other officers shot and killed him. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Report by Jeffrey Heller. curated by Grant McCool Our role models: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
