Police: Man, two young kids die in apparent murder-suicide in Tel Aviv

A 52-year-old man and his two children, a girl of 3 and a boy of 5, died Wednesday afternoon in what police are saying was a murder-suicide.

The man apparently threw his children off the roof of an 11-floor building on Eliyahu Berlin street in north Tel Aviv, according to eyewitnesses, then jumped off himself. The three were pronounced dead on the scene by Magen David Adom paramedics.

They did not live in the building and their personal belongings were found on the roof, police said.

An initial police investigation revealed that the man kidnapped the children from their mother earlier in the day. The parents have been undergoing divorce proceedings and a restraining order was filed against the father. He allegedly arrived at the mother’s house in the Sharon area and took the kids by force. The mother called police who began searching for the children.

She was being questioned Wednesday.

This was the second incident involving the murder of children by a parent in less than a week.

Earlier Wednesday, the funerals of the two children, who were found stabbed to death on Monday in Jerusalem, were held in the city.

The mother is suspected of stabbing them to death and attempting suicide.

Emergency services found the children, a boy, 7, and a girl, 5, with multiple stab wounds in an apartment on Ein Gedi Street, in the Talpiot neighborhood of the capital.

Earlier this month, a 48-year-old man killed his three daughters, his wife and his wife’s employer before killing himself in the Galilee village of Daburriyya.