Israeli security forces on Friday shot dead a Palestinian who killed two people in a Tel Aviv bar after an hours-long manhunt through the city.
The bar attack was the latest in a string of deadly street assaults that have killed 13 people and shaken the country.
Defence Minister Benny Gantz said Israel would broaden its operations against the “wave of terror” and that the attackers and those who send them would pay a “heavy price”.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the attack and stressed the dangers of “continuing the repeated incursions into Al-Aqsa Mosque and the provocative actions of extremist settler groups”, the Palestinian WAFA news agency reported a reference to the third-holiest site in Islam.
The officers found the shooter hiding near a mosque in Jaffa, just south of Tel Aviv, Israel’s Shin Bet security agency said. During an exchange of fire, the attacker was killed, the agency said.
Shin Bet identified the gunman as a 28-year-old Palestinian from Jenin, a city in the occupied West Bank, who was in Israel illegally.
Late on Thursday, at the start of the weekend in Israel, the attacker entered a pub on a crowded main street of Tel Aviv and began shooting, killing two people and seriously wounding three before fleeing. L2N2W523G
Residents were warned not to leave their homes as hundreds of Israeli security officers, assisted by a helicopter with a spotlight, combed the streets. BY THE STAR