5 people, including two Ukrainians killed in attack in Bnei Brak city in central Israel
Two Ukrainians were among five people killed in Tuesday’s shooting attack in central Israel, Israeli police said on Wednesday.
A police statement said that the two Ukrainian nationals were aged 23 and 33, but did not reveal their names.
A police officer was also killed in the attack in the city of Bnei Brak, the statement said.
Police said the attacker was a 26-year-old Palestinian from Ya’bad village near Jenin in the occupied West Bank.
Tuesday’s attack was the third in a week in Israel.
Four Israelis were killed in a knife attack in the southern city of Beersheba on March 22.
Israeli security authorities blamed the attack on a Daesh/ISIS sympathizer, saying the attacker had previously been imprisoned for “security-related” crimes.
On March 27, two policemen were killed and three others injured in a shooting attack claimed by the Daesh/ISIS terrorist group in the central city of Hadera.
According to a report, two Israeli civilians, two Ukrainian nationals and a police officer were killed in a Tuesday shooting attack in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak, authorities confirmed.
Avishai Yehezkel, a 29-year-old father of one, is laid to rest in Bnei Brak on Wednesday morning. Some 300 people attended the funeral.
His brother, Ovadia, told Kol Chai radio that “he was a special person. He defended his baby with his own body.”
Yaakov Shalom, 36, was a father of five. His funeral is being held in the central city of Petah Tikva.
Two Ukrainian immigrants, aged 24 and 33, were also killed in the attack, the Ukrainian embassy in Israel confirmed.
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Their names have not yet been released. According to Israeli officials, they were both in Israel for several years.
V’, One of the Ukrainians killed in the attack, had a wife in Israel. His friend, Yulian, told Haaretz that the couple was building a house in Ukraine: “He invested all the money he earned in construction in that house. They wanted to leave Israel in Easter if the war had ended by them.”
Yulian added that V’s mother and family are in Ukraine and that the families of both victims are trying to transfer their bodies for burial in Ukraine. “It’s dangerous here and it’s dangerous there, I don’t know where to go anymore,” he said.
The assailant, a resident of the West Bank village of Ya’bad, was shot dead by police forces.
One of the officers who was called to the scene of the attack, 32-year-old Amir Khoury, was killed. Khoury’s funeral will be held on Thursday in his town of Nof Hagalil, in Israel’s north.
