A man was stabbed to death and two other people were wounded in the center of Tel Aviv on Tuesday afternoon by an Arab resident of the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza, who apparently ran amok.
The assailant was shot and wounded by police, who captured him. They were waiting to interrogate him at the government-run Ichilov Hospital, where he and the two wounded victims were receiving medical treatment.
Police said preliminary investigations indicated that the assailant was insane.
But they have not ruled out the possibility that the attack was instigated by a terrorist organization.
According to police and eyewitnesses, the assailant, brandishing a kitchen knife, ran from a side street into the main Yehoshua Bin-Nun Street, near the corner of Arlozorov Street, where he knocked on the door of a small restaurant.
When the owner did not open the door, he continued his rush through the main street and first knifed a man in the back as he was bending to enter his car. The victim was killed on the spot.
The restaurant owner, looking through the window, saw the attack and called the police.
SHOUTED ‘ALLAH AKHBAR’
The attacker, meanwhile, continued running along the street, stabbing two other passers-by, before rushing up to the roof of a house.
On his way to the roof, the attacker knocked on the door of an apartment. A young girl inside saw through a peephole a man with a knife.
When she did not answer the knock, the assailant rushed up to the roof, where he began throwing down cooking-gas cylinders he found there.
A large force of police anti-terrorist experts was quickly on the spot. They followed the assailant to the roof, where he shouted “Allah akhbar” (God is great) and tried to stab one of the policemen.
The attacker and the two wounded bystanders were rushed to Ichilov Hospital. They were reported to have sustained medium injuries.
The names of the dead and injured had not been released by Tuesday evening.
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