An Arab gunman killed at least five people in a Tel Aviv suburb on Tuesday before he was fatally shot, the National Ambulance Service said, in the third fatality in Israel in a week.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett tweeted: “Israel is facing a wave of deadly Arab terror,” Prime Minister Naftali Bennett tweeted after the shootings in the Jewish ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak on the outskirts of Israel’s commercial capital.
The number of people killed by Arab gunmen in Israel rose to 11 in the past week, the sharpest increase in attacks on the city’s streets in years.
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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the killing of Israeli civilians and insisted that the killing of Israelis and Palestinians would only worsen the situation, cautioning against retaliatory attacks by Jewish settlers and others, the Palestinian Wafa news agency reported. .
Palestinians have reported an increase in violence settling in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 war.
Amateur video broadcast on Israeli television stations shows a man dressed in black and pointing at an assault rifle walking down a street in Beni Brak.
Israeli media reports, citing unidentified security officials, said the attacker was a Palestinian from a village near the occupied West Bank city of Genin.
Police said he killed four civilians and an officer who had arrived at the scene before officers fatally shot the gunman.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
Israeli officials warned in April about an increase in attacks during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, a period in which violence has increased in the past.
Last year saw Ramadan clashes at night between Palestinians and Israeli police and settlers. Police raids on the al-Aqsa mosque complex and a ban on evening gatherings at the Damascus Gate helped ignite violence between Israel and Gaza militants, which led to 11 days of Palestinian rocket attacks and Israeli airstrikes.
In Bnei Brak, witnesses said the gunman opened fire on balconies of apartments and then across the street and at people in a car.
According to a tweet posted by Megan David Adom, “I live on Hashnim Street in Bnei Brak and I was at home when I heard the gunshots.” “I immediately went to the street and saw a terrorist pointing a weapon at me. Miraculously, his weapon jammed and he could not fire.”
Last week, an Israeli Arab national killed four people in the southern city of Beersheba with a knife and car ramming attack before he was shot by a passerby. Israeli officials said he was an Islamic State sympathizer.
On Sunday, as an Israeli-Arab summit held in southern Israel, an Arab attacker shot and killed two police officers in Hadera, a city about 50 km (30 miles) north of Tel Aviv. Other officers shot and killed him.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Hadera attack.