Israeli rabbi killed in Petah Tikva knife attack
- Published
A rabbi has been stabbed to death by a Palestinian man in the Israeli city of Petah Tikva, Israeli police say.
Shai Ohayon, a 39-year-old father of four, was attacked at a road junction, reportedly after getting off a bus from a religious college where he studied.
A suspect was chased by a passer-by and later arrested by police. He is said to be a 46-year-old from a village near Nablus, in the occupied West Bank.
Investigators said they were treating the incident as a terrorist attack.
The Shin Bet security service said it was looking into whether the suspect had a history of mental illness, but that it was "too soon to tell" if that was relevant, according to the Times of Israel, external.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered his condolences to Rabbi Ohayon's family.
"The heart aches. My wife Sarah and myself are hugging the family, a wife and four children who are left without a father," he wrote on Twitter. "We will demolish the terrorist's house and work for carrying out the most severe punishment possible."
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Earlier on Wednesday, Mr Netanyahu shared an article on Facebook that said no Israeli civilian had been killed in a terrorist attack for 12 months for the first time in 56 years, the Jerusalem Post reported, external.
Since 2015, dozens of Israelis have been killed in a wave of stabbings, shootings and car-rammings, predominantly by Palestinians, in Israel and the West Bank.
Hundreds of Palestinians - most of them assailants, Israel says - have also been killed in that period, according to news agencies.
Others have been killed in clashes with Israeli troops.