A Palestinian man opened fire in several towns across central Israel on Sunday, killing one person and injuring five others, police said.
Israeli authorities said a 35-year-old Israeli man was killed in the shootings, with two of the five injured suffering severe wounds. The gunman in Sunday’s attack was in his 20s and had Israeli citizenship, police said, though his motives were not yet known.
The deadly attack comes as tensions between Palestinians and Israeli settlers have heightened after Israeli troops shot at a car in the West Bank over the weekend, killing a 7-month-old baby. Residents were told to stay at home, and schools were briefly locked down following Sunday’s shootings.
The shooting spree began Sunday morning at a gas station in Kochav Yair on the Israeli-West Bank border and moved to nearby towns, including Salit in the West Bank. Police said they arrested an accomplice who was attempting to stab officers with a glass bottle.
“Since Oct. 7, the scenario we were expecting was terrorists crossing into our towns from over the boundary. I don’t think that anyone imagined that we would discover the attackers were Israeli citizens,” Oshrit Gani Gonen, the head of the regional council, told Israeli media.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised authorities for neutralizing the gunman, while the nation’s controversial security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, released a video standing next to what appeared to be the gunman’s blurred body.
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“This is the end of every terrorist, this is how it should look,” Ben-Gvir, who attracted negative attention abroad and from within his own government for taunting Gaza flotilla activists late last month, said.
The shootings came the same day the Israel Defense Forces killed at least four Palestinians in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis. The IDF did not comment on the strikes but maintains that it only targets militants threatening Israeli troops.
