While Israel is organizing a meeting in the Negev between the heads of Israeli and American diplomacy and several Arab countries that have normalized their relations with the Jewish state, a deadly shooting took place this evening in the city of Hadera, at a fifty kilometers north of Tel Aviv.
With our correspondent in Jerusalem, Alice Froussard
According to the latest information from Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross, at least two policemen, a man and a woman, died and at least six people were injured in the attack. Dudu Boani, a senior police official in the area, said the attackers, two Israeli Arabs, had been identified by Israeli intelligence as local agents of the Islamic State (IS) organization.
Footage from surveillance cameras broadcast by an Israeli television channel shows two men, automatic weapons in hand, on a road, before heading for the sidewalk, opening fire on police in the town of Hadera, located between Haifa and Tel Aviv.
Police spokesman Eli Levy said: two members of the Border Police’s counter-terrorism units who were in a restaurant very close to the scene of the attack came out and neutralized the assailants », Palestinians from Israel, coming from Umm al Fahm, says another statement from the police.
Many reinforcements are on the scene and the neighborhood is cordoned off. Shortly after, the security forces crisscrossed parts of Umm al Fahm, an Arab town about twenty kilometers from Hadera, witnesses said.
Condemnations of political actors
Ayman Odeh, leader of theUnited List”, a group of Arab Israeli political parties concentrating its support in the north of the country, condemned the attack, saying that it “ had nothing to do with the political struggle that the Arab public waged for their rights “.
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz held evening consultations with the police and army chief, while Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who had spoken earlier in the day in Jerusalem with the Secretary of US State Antony Blinken, visited the scene of the attack in Hadera. He spoke with local officials there, his office said.
The head of Israeli diplomacy, Yaïr Lapid, indicated that he had informed » participants in the Negev summit. “ All Foreign Ministers condemned the attack and conveyed their condolences to the families of the victims “, he said.
In separate statements, the Palestinian armed Islamist movements of Hamas and Islamic Jihad hailed “the heroic operation of Hadera without however claiming paternity, Hamas saying that it had been conducted in response to the normalization summit on our land “.
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Tensions rise as Ramadan approaches
Last Tuesday, two men and two women were killed in a stabbing and ramming attack in Beersheva, the main city in the Negev desert. Stabbings against Israeli security forces occur sporadically in Jerusalem and are often carried out by Palestinians unrelated to ISIS.
But the Beersheva assailant has been identified by authorities as Mohammed Abu al-Kiyan, a teacher from the Bedouin town of Hura in the Negev, sentenced in 2016 to four years in prison for planning to travel to Syria to to fight within the EI group and for sermons making its apology.
One thing is certain, in Israel and the Palestinian Territories, tensions are high as Ramadan, the holy month for Muslims, approaches. A period when, last year, the many clashes in Jerusalem had led to eleven days of war.
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