Gunmen kill two people in central Israel attack

A pair of gunmen killed two people and wounded four others in a shooting spree in central Israel before they were killed by police, according to police and medical officials.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the shooting on Sunday, in the city of Hadera, about 50km (30 miles) north of Tel Aviv, but police called them “terrorists”.

“Luckily, our officers managed to neutralise the assailants and prevent a bigger terrorist attack,” national police spokesman Eli Levy said on Israel’s Kan television.

The Magen David Adom ambulance service said two people were killed by the assailants, with four other people taken to hospital and two more treated at the site.

Security camera footage of the attack circulating on Israeli media showed two bearded men appearing to open fire in the city of Hadera before they are shot.

The attack came as the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco – three countries that normalised relations with Israel in 2020 – convened for an unprecedented summit in southern Israel, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Egypt’s foreign minister Sameh Shoukry also in attendance.

On Tuesday, a Palestinian citizen of Israel was fatally shot after reportedly carrying out a stabbing attack in the southern Israeli city of Beer al-Sabe (Be’er Sheva) that killed at least four people and wounded two others.