Israeli wounded in East Jerusalem stabbing, assailant killed

Israeli security forces shot dead a Palestinian in occupied East Jerusalem after he stabbed an Israeli civilian and tried to attack police.

Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency service said on Saturday the stabbing victim was a 20-year-old Jewish man who was taken to hospital in “moderate to severe condition”.

The assailant used a knife to stab the man near the city’s Damascus Gate and then “attempted to stab a border police officer”, police said in a statement.

A spokeswoman for the Palestinian Red Crescent said police killed the Palestinian assailant.

The incident took place near Damascus Gate just outside East Jerusalem’s Old City, a crowded area that is often the scene of demonstrations and clashes.

The assailant was not immediately identified. Israeli public radio said he was a 25-year-old from the northern town of Salfit in the occupied West Bank.

‘Point blank range’

Footage filmed by a bystander near Damascus Gate and widely shared on social media showed a man in jeans lying prone on a sidewalk as police fired shots at him.

The official Palestinian state news agency Wafa said the man was killed “when Israeli police officers opened fire on him at point-blank range”.

Mohammed Hamadeh, Jerusalem spokesman for the Palestinian group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, decried the “deliberate shooting of a wounded young man lying on the ground”.

Palestinian lawmaker Dimitri Deliani described it as “the execution of a Palestinian young man in cold blood”.

Israel’s border police chief said he fully backed the officers whose response “resulted in the neutralisation of the terrorist and prevented him from further harming fighters and civilians at the scene”.

After the shooting, police fired tear gas near the Damascus Gate to disperse Palestinians gathered there.

The incident came after a Hamas-affiliated gunman fatally shot a Jewish tour guide in Jerusalem’s Old City before police killed him last month.

Days before that, security forces shot dead a 16-year-old assailant in the Old City who they said stabbed two police officers.

Israel has occupied East Jerusalem since 1967. Palestinians claim it as the capital of their future state.