Israeli soldier killed in stabbing at shopping centre

Israeli police said they were treating the stabbing as a “suspected terror attack”

An Israeli soldier has been killed and another seriously wounded in a stabbing attack at a shopping centre in the northern Israeli town of Karmiel, the Israeli military says.

Police said the attacker, a resident of the nearby mainly Arab town of Nahaf, was shot dead at the scene by one of the victims.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) named the soldier who died as Sgt Aleksandr Iakiminskyi. The 19-year-old was from Nahariya, about 30km (20 miles) away from the shopping centre.

CCTV footage appeared to show a man repeatedly stabbing two men wearing uniforms and armed with rifles, then running away before being shot and falling to the ground.

Police said they were treating the incident as a “suspected terror attack” and that a number of the attacker’s relatives had been detained.

There was no immediate claim from any group.

But Hamas said the attack was a “natural response” to what it called Israel’s “crimes” in Gaza and occupied West Bank. Palestinian Islamic Jihad called it a “heroic operation”.

Israel’s Magen David Adom ambulance service said its paramedics had treated two men in their 20s with penetrating wounds inside the shopping centre.

They administered CPR to one man who was in a critical condition before evacuating them both to the Galilee Medical Centre in Nahariya, it added.

Later, the hospital said one of the victims had died and that the other was being treated at its intensive care unit.

There has been a surge in violence in the West Bank and Israel since the start of the war in Gaza, which was triggered by Hamas's deadly attack on southern Israel on 7 October.

The UN reported on Wednesday that 22 Israelis - including nine security personnel - had been killed in attacks by Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank as of 1 July.

Over the same period, 539 Palestinians - members of armed groups, attackers and civilians - had been killed in the West Bank, the vast majority of them by Israeli forces, it said.