Four people were killed and several others injured on Tuesday in a ramming and stabbing attack at an outdoor shopping mall in Beersheba, officials said, in Israel’s deadliest terror attack in years.
According to police, the assailant first stabbed a woman to death at a nearby gas station in the Southern city, then rammed his vehicle into a cyclist, got out, and stabbed several people at the big shopping center, before being shot by a bus driver and another passerby.
The cyclist and two of the stabbing victims at the mall later died of their wounds.
The stabber was later identified as 34-year-old Mohammad Ghaleb Abu al-Qi’an, a former terror convict from the Bedouin town of Hura in the Negev.
According to the Zaka emergency service, Abu al-Qi’an died of his wounds.
Emergency service said a woman in her forties who had been stabbed by the assailant was declared dead at the scene.
Five others were taken to the nearby Soroka Medical Center. Three of them died of their wounds shortly after admission, the hospital said.
The other two were listed in serious but stable condition at the hospital.
The Hamas terror group had praised the stabbing attack, saying it “salutes the executor of the heroic operation in occupied Beersheba”.
“The occupation’s crimes shall be met with heroic operations: stabbings, rammings and shootings,” Hamas spokesperson, Abd al-Latif al-Qanou, told official Hamas radio.
The terror group, however, did not claim the stabber as a member.
Israel Times
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