Although it was initially suspected that the attack could involve two people, the police told the Spanish agency EFE that it was just one attacker, although they continued to search for possible accomplices.
A man shot dead one person and injured five, two of them seriously, in three different locations in central Israel before being shot down by police, authorities announced.
Emergency services reported that they received the first alert at 10:34 am local time (8:34 am in Lisbon) for gunshots at a gas station near the town of Kokhav Yair, on the Israeli side of the border with the West Bank.
The Magen David Adom service, corresponding to the Red Cross, stated that the attacker, who was traveling in a vehicle, started by shooting at two men, one of whom, aged 50, was in serious condition.
Although it was initially suspected that the attack could involve two people, the police told the Spanish agency EFE that it was just one attacker, although they continued to search for possible accomplices.
After opening fire at the gas station, the attacker went to Tzur Yitzhak, about two kilometers away, where he fired again, leaving two more injured.
They are a 30-year-old man, injured in the hand, and a 61-year-old woman, who was inside a car and was hit in the upper part of the body.
The third point of the attack was on a road near the Sela’it settlement in the West Bank, where emergency doctors found a man dead from gunshot wounds inside a car.
At the scene, another person was found seriously injured in the upper part of the body.
“During the journey, several civilians signaled for me to stop and called me to provide medical care to a person unconscious inside a vehicle,” reported paramedic Lior Zilberberg, who went to the scene.
“He had no pulse or breathing, he had gunshot wounds to his body and, after medical evaluation, we were forced to declare him dead,” he added, quoted by EFE.
The Israeli health service Clalit reported that it had received the injured and that one of the people on strike was transferred directly to the operating room.
Israeli police said officers located the vehicle involved in the attack and killed the attacker, who authorities say was a resident of the neighboring town of Tayibe, which has an Arab majority.
No further official details were provided about the identity of the attacker or the reasons for the attack.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that he was assessing the situation and closely monitoring the “deadly shooting attack”.
The Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, stated on social media that if the attacker had been captured alive he would have been executed.
“This is the law, and we will demand its application,” said the far-right leader, referring to the law that provides for the death penalty for Palestinians who commit acts considered terrorist.
“This is precisely why Otzma Yehudit approved the ‘Death Penalty for Terrorists’ Law,” he wrote, alluding to the ultranationalist party he leads and which is part of Netanyahu’s government coalition.
“Jewish blood is not disposable. Whoever murders a Jew will face the hangman’s noose,” added Ben Gvir, quoted by The Jerusalem Post.
The attack was celebrated by the radical Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jiahad, from the Gaza Strip, who considered it a “heroic operation”.
Hamas denounced the escalation of Israeli policies “in the construction of settlements, confiscation of land, murders, arrests, forced displacement and terrorism of settlers” in the West Bank.
The group that led the terrorist attacks against Israel in October 2023, followed by the invasion and near destruction of Gaza by Israeli forces, considered that the policies in question fuel “the battlefields”.
Islamic Jihad also applauded the attack, describing it as “a natural response to the crimes of the occupation [israelita] and groups of settlers” against the Palestinians, according to EFE.
