An Israeli soldier was killed in a stabbing attack in central Israel on Thursday, the military said, and a police official said the assailant was shot dead.
The Israeli military identified the victim as 51-year-old Uri Moyal, a command sergeant major, and said on its website he “was killed during an attack at the intersection of Beit Kama”, a kibbutz roughly 55 kilometres (35 miles) southwest of Jerusalem.
Israeli police commissioner Yaakov Shabtai told reporters at the scene of the attack that the perpetrator was a 23-year-old man who grew up in Gaza until he was 18 but had moved to Israel four years ago and “got married here”.
Police “immediately arrived at the scene and the initial investigation revealed that a terrorist entered the restaurant on the spot, stabbed a soldier who returned fire at the terrorist and neutralised him,” a police statement said.
A police official later told AFP that the assailant was killed.
The Magen David Adom emergency service treated the soldier and transported him to a hospital in Beersheba, in southern Israel, the statement said.
“We arrived at the scene in large numbers, we saw a great commotion, and next to one of the stores a man in his 50s was lying unconscious and suffering from stab wounds to his body,” Kalman Ginzburg, a senior paramedic with MDA, said in a statement.
“We immediately put him on mobile ICU and took him to hospital in critical condition while performing resuscitation.”
The attack came one day after police said two Israeli security personnel were wounded in a stabbing carried out by a 15-year-old Palestinian boy on a bicycle.
That attack occurred at the Tunnels checkpoint south of Jerusalem, and police later pronounced the assailant dead.
Israel’s genocide in Gaza has killed 31,341 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry.
