Police nab Palestinian suspect in Jerusalem stabbing

18-year-old from West Bank admits carrying out Old City terrorist attack that moderately wounded an Israeli man, officials say

Police late Monday night arrested a Palestinian youth suspected of stabbing and moderately injuring an Israeli man in a terror attack in Jerusalem’s Old City on Monday evening.

The suspect was detained after a major manhunt for the perpetrator in the attack in the heart of Jerusalem’s ancient quarter, which ended weeks of relative calm after months of roiling violence in the capital.

Immediately after the attack, security officials shut down the Old City and launched extensive searches for the assailant, the police said in a statement.

The attacker, an 18-year-old resident of the West Bank, admitted during initial questioning that he had carried out the attack. The investigation was ongoing, police said.

According to officials, the victim, apparently in his 60s, said he was stabbed in the back on al-Khaldaya Street in the center of Old City and reached the Austrian Hospice hotel some 300 meters away, where he reported he’d been attacked and asked for help.

Police spokesperson Luba Samri said that officers found a knife at the scene.

The victim was transferred to a local hospital for treatment. Hospital officials described him as stable and conscious.

The attack came weeks after Israeli officials pointed to a marked decrease in Palestinian stabbing, shooting and car-ramming attacks in and around Jerusalem, following six months of near-daily assaults which had wracked Israel and the West Bank.

The calm had been previously shattered by an April 18 bus bombing, in which a Palestinian resident of Bethlehem blew himself up in Jerusalem, injuring 20 people and killing himself. Israel said the attacker was a Hamas member; while the terror group praised the attack, it avoided claiming responsibility.

Twenty-nine Israelis and four non-Israelis have been killed in the recent wave of terror attacks. Some 200 Palestinians have also been killed, some two-thirds of them while attacking Israelis, and the rest during clashes with troops, according to the Israeli army.