Israeli police say the suspect was killed and are investigating the incident as a possible “terrorist attack.”
An Israeli soldier was killed and a second person was injured in a stabbing attack at a shopping mall in northern Israel, police said, adding that the suspect was shot dead.
The attack took place on Wednesday on the second floor of the Hutzot Karmiel shopping mall in the northern Israeli city of Karmiel.
Gal Zeid, a spokesman for the Galilee Medical Center, said doctors pronounced one man dead after failing to resuscitate him. The second person was admitted to the hospital’s intensive care unit.
Police said the suspect, who was not named but identified as a Palestinian citizen of Israel from the town of Nahf, had been “neutralized” and that they were investigating the incident as a possible “terrorist attack.”
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but Palestinian Islamic Jihad described the attack in a Telegram message as a “heroic operation.”
Israeli authorities arrested members of the suspect’s family, including his mother, brother and sister, according to Israeli media reports citing Karmiel police chief Yitzhak Abuhatzira.
A video shared on social media, verified by Tel Aviv Tribune’s Sanad fact-checking agency, shows people in the mall trying to give first aid to an injured victim who was wearing a green uniform.
The entrances to the mall were closed by police who carried out extensive search and sweep operations in the area, Israeli radio reported.
Since Israel launched its war on Gaza last October, tensions between it and the Palestinians have increased.
Israel has killed nearly 38,000 Palestinians in its bombings of Gaza and more than 500 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, where it carries out near-daily raids.
“It is impossible to separate what is happening inside Israel, in terms of the stabbing attack, from the dynamics of the occupation in the West Bank or the war in Gaza,” said Tel Aviv Tribune’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
“Tensions are rising and reaching a boiling point,” Odeh said of frequent army raids, rampages by Jewish settlers in Palestinian villages and deadly attacks in the streets.
Peace Now, an anti-settlement organization, said Wednesday that Israeli authorities had recently approved the seizure of 12.7 square kilometers (4.9 square miles) of land in the occupied West Bank – the largest appropriation in more than three decades.
Since the beginning of the year, Israel has declared 23.7 square kilometers (9.15 square miles) of Palestinian territory as state land, he said.
“All this drives Palestinians to despair and anger at Israeli policies that push them off their lands and make their lives unbearable, wherever they are,” Odeh added.
On Wednesday, the Gaza Health Ministry said at least 37,953 people have been killed and 87,266 injured in Israel’s war on Gaza since October 7.