Ashkelon stabber identified as Sudanese national

A man who stabbed and lightly wounded an Israeli soldier on Sunday in the southern city of Ashkelon before being shot and killed was a Sudanese national, police said.

Police said the incident near a bus station was suspected to be part of a wave of Palestinian knife, gun and car-ramming attacks that erupted in October, but noted that the investigation is ongoing.

Palestinian media reports identified the attacker as Kamel Hassan, 32, with some calling him a “martyr,” a term usually reserved for those killed while fighting Israel.

The incident saw the Sudanese man stab the soldier and flee, according to police. Another soldier in the area grabbed the wounded soldier’s gun and chased the Sudanese man before shooting him.

A witness told Israeli public radio the soldier called out to the stabber to stop, and then shot him three times, but he continued to run. The soldier then fired three more times, according to the witness.

The attacker was rushed to a hospital in serious condition and later declared dead.

Hassan entered Israel illegally in 2008, Channel 2 reported later Sunday.

Some 30 Israelis have been killed in a wave of Palestinian terrorism and violence since October. More than 160 Palestinians have been killed, most of them in the act of attacking Israelis.

Foreign nationals have not previously participated in such attacks.

A large number of illegal immigrants have arrived in Israel from Sudan through Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, though the status of the person killed Sunday was not clear.

Official figures show 45,000 illegal immigrants are in Israel, almost all from Eritrea and Sudan. About two-thirds are Eritrean.

In October, an Eritrean migrant worker who was mistaken for an Arab attacker died after he was shot and brutally beaten at a bus station in the southern city of Beersheba.