The author of the armed attack who killed two people on Thursday night and caused chaos in the heart of Tel Aviv, was killed Friday morning by Israeli services. Israeli security services said they had killed the attacker after a nine-hour manhunt. “The terrorist who carried out the armed attack in Tel Aviv yesterday has been located and neutralized,” officials said Friday morning, adding that the man, a Palestinian from the occupied West Bank, had been killed near a mosque in the Jaffa district, south of the city.
Residents were warned not to leave their homes as hundreds of Israeli security agents, assisted by a helicopter equipped with a searchlight, combed the streets in pursuit.
At 5:20 a.m. local time (6:20 a.m. French time), the man was shot dead during a shootout, Israel’s security service Shin Bet said. Witnesses heard the shots after morning prayers, the Haaretz newspaper said. Identified as Raed Fathi Zidan Hazem, he was 28 years old and originally from the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. He was illegally in Israel.
Magen David Adom, the Israeli Red Cross equivalent, said on Thursday 16 injured were transferred to local hospitals in connection with the attack on Dizengoff Street, in the heart of Tel Aviv’s bars and restaurants. “We have received several serious injuries with different types of injuries, mainly to the chest, abdomen and some to the face (…) unfortunately two have died and we are currently fighting to save lives,” said the director of the Ichilov office. hospital in Tel. Aviv, Ronni Gamzu.
The two victims were men, aged 27 and 28. Four of the 16 injured are still in serious condition on Friday morning. Among these four persons are two men aged 20 and 38 and a 28-year-old woman. Three other wounded have been stabilized, the others have been more moderately affected.
According to initial investigations, the attacker would have roamed the wide Dizengoff Street, no doubt looking for a crowded establishment, before sitting on a bench opposite the Ilka Bar for 15 minutes before carrying out his attack. After escaping, he jumped a fence and dropped several bullets, then fled down a side street and tried unsuccessfully to shoot another man. In total, he would have fired a dozen bullets.
Although Israeli authorities say Raed Hazem had no ties to an armed faction, the Palestinian armed movement Islamic Jihad “welcomed” Thursday’s attack, a “natural response” to the “crimes” and “occupation” of Israel. Hamas, the ruling movement in Gaza, called it a “heroic operation”. Jenin, where he came from, is also the area of origin of the perpetrator of the March 29 attack that killed five people, including two Ukrainians and an Israeli-Arab police officer. were killed in Bnei Brakan ultra-Orthodox Jewish city on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.
In the wake of this attack that followed, to a series of attacksthe army had raided Jenin in which three Islamic Jihad fighters were killed.
