Two stabbing attacks against Israeli police and the IDF took place on Sunday evening in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, during which the attackers were killed without causing any casualties among the police, the police and the IDF announced. army.
These almost simultaneous incidents occur in a context of tensions fueled in Israel and the Palestinian territories by the war underway for four months between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Shortly after 9 p.m. in East Jerusalem's Old City, a man arrived near a police checkpoint, approached officers and "suddenly pulled out a knife and tried to stab them," a spokesperson said. of the Israeli police in a message to the press.
Incidents on the rise since October 7
The police “reacted quickly” and “neutralized the terrorist by shooting,” he added, specifying that there “are no victims among the forces” of law and order but that a “passerby was slightly injured in the leg.
He was hit by a fragment of a bullet, the emergency services said.
Images posted on social media showed police running through the streets of the Old City, which is home to Christian, Jewish and Muslim holy sites.
Around the same time in Hussan, a village in the occupied West Bank located 10 km from Jerusalem, another attacker “attempted to stab a soldier” Israeli deployed at a roadblock and was “neutralized” by the soldiers, said the army in a message to the press.
Since the start of the war triggered by the Hamas attack on October 7 in Israel, tensions have been numerous in East Jerusalem, the Palestinian part of the city occupied and annexed by Israel in 1967, and in the occupied West Bank.
Incidents have increased in these territories.