One person is dead and four more are injured after an Arab citizen in Israel stabbed them at a central transit hub on Monday.
A 20-year-old Druze Israeli reportedly began stabbing victims after exiting a bus in Haifa, Israel, the Times of Israel reported. The killer suffered from mental illness, the outlet reported, citing family members.
The knife attack is being treated as a “militant attack,” according to Fox News. A security guard and an armed civilian reportedly killed the attacker, who had recently returned to Israel after spending time abroad.
“My wife Sara and I extend our deepest condolences to the family of the victim of the horrific terrorist attack in Haifa, and we send our wishes for a speedy recovery to the injured,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement after the attack. “We will continue to fight those who seek to harm us – wherever they are – and we will defeat them.”
The sole casualty was a 70-year-old man who was stabbed in the back multiple times, the Times reported. Hassan Karim Dahamsheh was a resident of the Arab town of Kafr Kanna in Israel.
A 15-year-old boy was also among the injured, but is reportedly in stable condition after emergency surgery for his life-threatening injuries. Three others – a woman in her 70s and a man and woman in their 30s – were hospitalized with less severe wounds, the Times reported.
Graphic footage from the incident shows the attacker running up to Dahamsheh and stabbing him multiple times in the back before they both fall to the ground.
An eyewitness told a local outlet that the 20-year-old got off a bus from Shfar’am and shouted “Allahu Akbar” before attacking people around him with a knife. Israel Police Chief Daniel Levy said police were working to confirm that the attacker acted alone, the Times reported. The outlet also noted that police raided the suspect’s home and were questioning his family.
Shfar’am Mayor Nahad Hazem told the Kan public broadcaster that two of the five victims were from his city and that one was a relative of his office director.
“It is a heinous crime, and I completely condemn it,” he told the outlet, according to the Times.
The killer’s relatives denied that he was a terrorist, saying he had a mental illness.
“I am a disabled IDF veteran and his other uncle is a reserve soldier. We have nothing in our family hostile to the state,” his uncle Roni Kharis reportedly told Ynet.
The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas praised the attack but did not take credit for it.
As the Times reported, the stabbing was the latest “in a string of terror attacks targeting public transportation in Israel, after a ramming attack at a bus stop on Thursday and a series of botched bus bombings near Tel Aviv a week earlier.”
