Israeli security forces have killed a Palestinian who opened fire at a bar in Tel Aviv, killing two people and wounding 12 others, police say.
The man, from Jenin in the occupied West Bank, was tracked down to nearby Jaffa and died in a shootout.
Hours earlier he had attacked people at the Ilka bar on Dizengoff Street, one of the busiest streets in Tel Aviv, sparking a night-long manhunt.
It was the latest in a spate of attacks in Israel which have killed 13 people.
The gunman, identified as Raad Hazem, 28, was later found hiding near a mosque about four miles (6km) away. He was killed after a brief gun battle with counter-terrorism and security agents.
Officials said over 1,000 members of the Israeli police, army special forces and the Shin Bet intelligence service were involved in the search.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said security forces were on “maximum alert”, adding: “Our war on murderous terror is long and difficult. We will win.” He ordered a crossing point between the West Bank and Israel, near to Jenin, to close until further notice.
Shin Bet said Hazem had entered Israel illegally and had no known links to militant organisations, the Times of Israel reported.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned “the killing of Israeli civilians”, warning that “the killing of Palestinian and Israeli civilians only leads to a further deterioration of the situation”, the official Palestinian Wafa news agency said.
However, the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, praised Thursday night’s attack.
IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES Image caption, The two people killed in the attack were 27-year-old childhood friends
Israeli media reports say Hazem had been sitting outside Ilka bar for about 15 minutes before he opened fire at about 21:00 (18:00 GMT), sparking pandemonium.
“I was heading north and as we were passing by a bar shots started,” Mark Malfiev, who was injured, told the BBC.
“I saw the window shattering, suddenly people started running and I felt a back pain,” he said. “I did not know there was an injury. I was just walking and then I felt a lot of blood, I saw blood.”
CCTV footage showed people drinking then suddenly dashing away at the moment of the attack, overturning chairs in the scramble to escape. Video from Dizengoff Street showed people running away as emergency vehicles poured into the area, sirens wailing.
The two people killed were named as childhood friends Eytam Magini and Tomer Morad, both aged 27.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned the attack, adding that Washington stood with Israel “resolutely in the face of senseless terrorism and violence”.
Israel’s security forces were already on a high state of alert after a spate of deadly attacks in recent days.
At the end of last month, five people were shot dead by a Palestinian gunman in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish suburb of Tel Aviv. Days earlier, six people were killed in two attacks by three Israeli Arabs in the northern city of Hadera and the southern city of Beersheba. All the perpetrators were shot dead.
BBC
