Twin reports of stabbing attacks sow confusion in Jerusalem

An Israeli woman claimed she escaped a stabbing attack by fighting off her Palestinian assailant in southern Jerusalem, police said Sunday afternoon.

The woman, in her early 30s, told police a young Arab armed with a knife tried to stab her in the Talpiot neighborhood but she succeeded in repelling him.

Police started scouring the area in search of the suspect, a spokesperson said.

“A young man, apparently an Arab minor, walked past her and then returned in her direction, and according to the woman, she realized then that he had a knife in his hand,” police said.

“She fought with him and he ran away without injuring her,” the spokesperson added.

A short time earlier, there had been reports of an attack in the German Colony area of the capital, prompting police and emergency medical personnel — and journalists — to rush to the scene.

But these reports turned out to be false. The source of the false reports from the German Colony appears to have been a personal argument between two Arabic speakers in the nearby Liberty Bell Park.

News outlets, however, conflated the two incidents. Some made it seem as though the attempted attack had occurred there, and not in Talpiot, while others made it appear that there had been two separate attacks.

On Sunday morning, police officers prevented a stabbing attack at a checkpoint outside Jerusalem. A man ran toward a group of police at the Mizmoriya checkpoint near Jerusalem’s Har Homa neighborhood with a knife, police said. Another officer, watching the area through a security camera, saw the man charging with the knife and warned the officers, police said in a statement.

Police then shot and subdued the assailant before any Israeli security personnel could be injured, the statement said. The assailant, later identified by Palestinian sources as as Naim Ahmad Yousif Safi, from the village of al-Ubeidiya east of Bethlehem, died of his wounds, police said. After the incident, the road from the Tekoa settlement in the West Bank to Jerusalem was briefly closed to traffic.

Earlier on Sunday, two Palestinian teenagers were shot and killed by IDF troops when one of them opened fire at the soldiers. The troops had been patrolling outside the Israeli settlement of Hinanit, near Jenin. The soldiers arrived in the area in response to reports of a rock throwing incident, the army said in a statement. There were no injuries on the Israeli side.