Palestinian attacker stabs soldier, is shot dead by police

A Palestinian man stabbed an IDF soldier and grabbed his gun in the southern city of Kiryat Gat on Wednesday. He then fled to a fourth floor apartment, where he was shot and killed by police.

The soldier was lightly injured in the attack, with wounds to his head, apparently inflicted with a pair of scissors.

A second soldier was injured as well.

Magen David Adom paramedics provided first aid at the scene, the rescue service reported.

Liat Ohana said she encountered the terrorist in the kitchen of her apartment, and that “he had murder in his eyes.” She said she pushed him into her kitchen, where she heard him rooting around in the cutlery, apparently looking for a knife. The gun he had seized had no magazine.

She and her mother fled, screaming, she said, and later heard gunfire. “I didn’t think I’d get out alive, but I was determined to fight,” Ohana said later. The security forces “shot him in my kitchen,” she told Army Radio.

“We could have had a hostage situation here,” said a local police commander. “It could have unfolded very differently.”

The attacker was identified in media sources as Amjad Hatem al-Jundi, from the West Bank town of Yatta in the southern West Bank, and in Israel illegally. His age was listed by Israeli news site Ynet as 19 years old and by the Palestinian Ma’an news agency as 24.

כוחות משטרה בכניסה לבניין המגורים בקריית גת pic.twitter.com/3zK5FVRYyN

— Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) October 7, 2015

“From initial information, the suspect got off the bus in Kiryat Gat, identified a soldier and stole his gun,” the Israel Police said in a statement. “The soldier clashed with the suspect and was lightly stabbed in the head.

“The suspect fled the scene with the soldier’s weapon toward an apartment building. Kiryat Gat policeman from the Southern District arrived at the scene minutes later, and confronted the suspect, who apparently fired at them. The police officers returned fire and terminated him. There were no injuries of our forces.”

Ohana said she was “sure I won’t be the same person after this.” Asked if she would be sleeping in the apartment as usual, she said, “I have no choice.”

“May God protect us, and all of the people of Israel,” she said.

The statement said that the attack was likely nationalistically motivated but that authorities had yet to determine the identity of the assailant.

Earlier Wednesday, a young Palestinian woman stabbed an Israeli man in the Old City. The man, who was moderately injured, used his personal firearm to shoot the woman, seriously injuring her.