JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A knife attack at an Israeli shopping mall on Wednesday killed one person and wounded another, with the attacker shot to death, Israeli police and medics said.
Police said the incident was suspected of a terrorist attack. Israel’s Ynet news website identified the alleged attacker as Joud Rabia from Nahav, an Israeli town where many members of the Arab minority live.
Although the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad posted on the Telegram website that the attack was a “heroic action,” no group claimed responsibility.
Israeli medics told Reuters that one of the two victims was pronounced dead after being taken to hospital and that the attacker died at a shopping mall in Kamil in northern Israel.
Earlier on Wednesday, medics said they were treating two men in their 20s, one in a serious condition and the other fully conscious.
Video shared on social media seen by Reuters showed two men lying motionless on the mall floor as people attempted to give them medical attention. The video shows at least one man receiving care wearing a green uniform.
The third man was not wearing uniform and was lying motionless not far away.
Israel is launching a military offensive in Gaza in retaliation for a deadly Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7 last year.
Violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which was already on the rise before the Gaza war, has escalated as Israeli military attacks, settler violence and Palestinian street attacks intensified.
In January, a Palestinian ramming attack in central Israel killed a woman and injured 12 others.
