Jerusalem - Arab Today
A British student was killed and two Israelis were injured in a "terror" attack carried out by a knife-wielding Palestinian in Jerusalem's light rail on Friday noon, Israeli officials said.
The woman casualty, identified by police spokeswoman Luba Samri as a 25-year-old tourist and a student from England, was stabbed by a 57-year-old Palestinian passenger in the light rail.
A spokesperson for the MDA emergency medical service said the woman, whose name was not disclosed, received a CPR at the scene before she was rushed to the Sha'arey Tzedek Hospital in Jerusalem.
About an hour later, the hospital announced that she succumbed to her wounds.
According to Samri, initial investigation showed that the assailant went on the light rail as a passenger. When the rail reached the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) Square rail stop, near East Jerusalem, he pulled out a knife and stabbed the British tourist.
An Israeli man and a pregnant woman, who were apparently injured as the rail went into an emergency brake, also needed hospital care, the MDA spokesperson said. They sustained light injuries, according to the spokesperson.
The police first said the assailant was shot but later Samri said that a policeman who was on the rail noticed the incident and arrested him without shooting.
Samri described the stabber as a "mentally disturbed" Palestinian from Ras al-Amud, a Palestinian neighborhood of East Jerusalem, a territory that Israel had occupied in the 1967 Middle East War and later annexed in a move never recognized by the international community.
Samri added the suspect holds an Israeli ID.
The rail service in the city was temporarily halted, said a statement by Citipass, the company that operates the rail.
The attack came amidst the Jewish holiday of Passover.
It also came amidst a spate of violence that broke out in September 2015.
Since the beginning of the unrest, Palestinians have killed 41 Israelis and two U.S. nationals, while Israeli forces and civilians killed at least 241 Palestinians, a Jordanian, and two African asylum seekers, most of them alleged attackers, according to Israel.
Israel accuses the Palestinian National Authority of "inciting" the unrest. The Palestinians say it is the result of 50 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, home to more than five million Palestinians.
Source: Xinhua