Two Ukrainians were the victims of an armed attack near the Israeli capital Tel Aviv, which killed five people last night, including a police officer, Israeli and Ukrainian authorities said this morning, according to AFP. According to the Associated Press, five Palestinians were arrested during the attack, who are probably relatives of the perpetrator, according to the Associated Press.
Two Ukrainians, aged 23 and 32, were among those killed in Bnei Brak, a city near Tel Aviv populated mainly by ultra-Orthodox Jews, police said today.
In a communiqué, the Ukrainian embassy in Israel condemned the “hateful terrorist attack in Bnei Brak” and confirmed “with deep sadness” that two Ukrainian citizens were among those killed. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, thousands of Ukrainians took refuge in Israel, home to more than a million Jews from the former Soviet Union.
Israeli authorities said today that the two Ukrainians killed were workers, not refugees or asylum seekers.
Dia Hammarshah, a 27-year-old Palestinian from the West Bank-occupied village of Yabad, opened fire in central Bnei Brak yesterday at about 8 p.m. local time, killing five people, including two Ukrainians sitting near a local store.
On Sunday, two police officers were shot dead in an attack in the city of Hadera, and seven days ago four people were killed by stab wounds in Bersheba. In all, 11 people have been killed in three attacks in Israel in one week.