Three people were seriously injured this Sunday following a knife attack near Ashdod, in central Israel, according to emergency services.
“A knife attack occurred in the Friendly shopping center in Gan Yavne,” said Zaki Heller, spokesman for Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross, in statements made this Sunday night.
“Emergency teams treated three seriously injured people”, who were hospitalized, continued the same source.
Israeli police authorities confirmed that a “terrorist” had “stabbed three people” with “two knives” before being “neutralized” by municipal police.
“The suspect is believed to be 19 years old and from Hebron”, in the West Bank, a police spokesman told the French agency AFP, without confirming, in preliminary information, whether the attacker had been killed.
Several similar attacks have occurred in Israel in recent weeks, against the backdrop of the ongoing war between the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip.
The war was triggered by an unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist group on Israeli soil, on October 7, 2023, which caused around 1,200 deaths, the vast majority of them civilians, and more than two hundred hostages, according to Israeli authorities.
Israel promised to annihilate Hamas and launched a military operation in the Gaza Strip that has already caused more than 32,000 deaths, according to the Palestinian Islamist group, which has controlled the territory since 2007.
