An attacker opened fire in a crowded restaurant district in central Tel Aviv on Thursday evening, killing at least two people and wounding several others before fleeing into a dense residential area, Israeli officials said
Police said there were “indications” it was a terrorist attack – the fourth deadly assault in Israel in less than three weeks at a time of heightened Israeli-Palestinian tensions. The militant Hamas group that rules the Gaza Strip praised the attack but did not claim responsibility.
“Our working assumption is that he is still in the vicinity,” he told reporters. “As of right now, there are indications pointing to this being a terrorist attack, but I have to be very delicate about this, and say that we are also checking other leads.” Tensions have been high after a series of attacks by Palestinian assailants killed 11 people just ahead of the holy Islamic month of Ramadan, which began nearly a week ago. Last year, protests and clashes in Jerusalem during Ramadan ignited an 11-day Gaza war.
The mosque is the third holiest site in Islam and sits on a hilltop that is the most sacred site for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount. The holy site has long been a flashpoint for Israeli-Palestinian violence. Israel annexed East Jerusalem in a move not recognized internationally and considers the entire city to be its capital. It is building and expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which most of the international community considers illegal.
On March 29, a 27-year-old Palestinian from the West Bank methodically gunned down people in the central town of Bnei Brak, killing five. Two days earlier, a shooting attack by two Islamic State sympathizers in the central city of Hadera killed two police officers. The week before, an IS sympathizer killed four people in a car-ramming and stabbing attack in the southern city of Beersheba. The Hadera and Beersheba attacks were carried out by Palestinian citizens of Israel.
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