Assailant Apprehended Hours After Stabbing Four in Southern Israel
Police say man who carried out attack in Kiryat Gat is from Hebron area; two suspected accomplices also arrested; Bedouin man beaten by mob after mistaking him for attacker.
After a manhunt that lasted several hours Israel Police announced Saturday it apprehended the assailant who stabbed four people in the southern Israeli city of Kiryat Gat.
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The four victims - two men, a woman and a 13-year-old girl - suffered moderate-to-serious wounds.
According to the police, the assailant is a resident of Yatta, near Hebron, as are two suspected accomplices who were also arrested. The police added that the man was found hiding with the bloody knife still in his hand.
The incident took place near the entrance to the stadium on the corner of David Hamaelch street and Malchei Israel street. Police blocked roads in the city as it searched for the assailant.
An eye witness said the knife-wielding attacker, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, ran toward the victims shouting "allahu akbar" (God is the greatest).
After treating the victims on scene, they were taken by Magen David Adom ambulance service to Barzilai Medical Center, Ashkelon for further treatment. The four victims, a man and two women in their 40s and 50s and a 13-year-old girl, were said to have suffered moderate-to-serious wounds.
Police said that a Bedouin man in his 40s from the Segev Shalom, a town southeast of Be'er Sheva, was beaten by a mob in a construction site near the location of the stabbings after they mistook him for the attacker. He was taken to Barzilai hospital with light wounds for further treatment.
Five Israelis were killed on Thursday in two unrelated attacks. On Thursday afternoon, three people were killed and five others were wounded in a shooting and car-ramming attack in Gush Etzion, a settlement bloc in the West Bank. Earlier that day, two people were killed in a stabbing attack in Tel Aviv. The assailants in both incidents were detained.