Many wounded were also reported by the Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross and a Tel Aviv hospital. The mobile of the attack was not yet clearly established.
Le Monde and AFP
A new armed attack has made at least two dead and many wounded, Thursday, April 7, in the evening, in the center of the Israeli metropolis Tel Aviv. The Magen David Adom, the equivalent of the Israeli Red Cross, said in a brief message that have treated several wounded, some of which were in critical condition and were transferred to Ichilov Hospital.
But soon after, this same hospital reported two deaths and eight wounded in this attack – the second in nine days in the Tel Aviv region and the fourth in less than three weeks in Israel. The precise mobile of the attack was not yet clearly established.
Thursday evening, witnesses on the spot told the France-Presse agency (AFP) hear shots and saw scenes of chaos in the center of Tel Aviv where the Israeli police said to be deployed. “It’s an atmosphere of war, soldiers and police around … They searched the restaurant, people cry and run in every way,” said a witness, who works in a restaurant near the place of attack , at AFP.
In a statement, the police asked the people not to go out outside, to avoid being the shot target. “The police call people to stay at home and allow the forces to take care of the incident that is still in progress, in order to locate suspects,” she said in a statement.
Fourth attack in three weeks in the country
The Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, is, on his side, at the Army HQ in Tel Aviv, where he receives the latest information on this shootout, “said his services. Last week, a Palestinian with occupied West Bank had opened fire on the crowd by circulating by car in the Jewish-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak, near Tel Aviv, killing five people, including two Ukrainian and an Israeli Arab policeman.
A few days earlier, two policemen, including a young Franco-Israeli, had been killed in a shootout claimed by the Jihadiste organization Islamic State (EI) in Hadera (North). On March 22, in Beersheva, a large city of the Negev (south) desert, four Israelis were killed in a knife attack and the car-aframe perpetrated by a teacher, sentenced in 2016 to four years in prison for planning to go to Syria, in order to fight within the EI.
In the wake of these attacks, the army, police and Israeli domestic security services have arrested dozens of people suspected of connection with the EI in Israel and multiplied operations in occupied West Bank, including Jenin, Northern sector of this Palestinian territory from which the assailant of Bnei Brak’s attack originated.
At least three members of the Islamic Jihad, the second Palestinian armed Islamist movement after Hamas, were killed last week in shots in connection with these operations in Jenin.