From the Liveblog of
Thursday, November 19, 2015
Eyewitness accounts of Tel Aviv stabbing attack
Shimon Vaknin went to attend an afternoon prayer gathering along with 20-30 other people when the services were interrupted as one of the victims staggered into the room seeking help and collapsed.
“We were praying the Mincha [afternoon] services,” he recalled. “In the middle of the prayers suddenly we saw a man fall down wounded at the entrance to the synagogue and behind him a man with a knife who was trying to get inside.
“Someone shouted ‘there is a terrorist!’.”
As some of the worshipers tried to assist the injured man the rest quickly closed the doors to the room, he said.
“We managed to close the doors and he tried to force them open. If he would have managed to get inside he would have slaughtered the worshipers. We used all of our strength to not let him inside and then he went on to the nearby shops to try and hurt someone there.”
The men inside armed themselves with bars and went out looking for the stabber and as they emerged they saw another man on the floor also badly injured.
“It was a big miracle; it is a terrible disaster but it could have been much worse.”
Yisrael Bahar, who works in a shop close to the building heard the commotion outside and ran to investigate.
“We heard screams. I saw someone on the floor as the terrorist stabbed him. I had a bar in my and I threw it at him. The terrorist started to run after me, I ran back to the place where I work and I closed the doors. The terrorist realized that he can’t get in and went downstairs. Afterwards we ran to the wounded man and attended to him. He died in my arms.”
Another eyewitness, identified by the Hebrew-language NRG website only as Paz, was in the building during the attack.
“We were upstairs in a clothes shop. We saw people covered in blood. One of them had been stabbed in the throat. The police caught the terrorist. The person who was murdered was going to prayers and was stabbed in the neck.”
The Times of Israel Community.