PM Bennett Vows Tough Response After 4 Killed in Terror Attack in Southern Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Tuesday that his government would “act with a strong hand against those who carry out terror,” following a stabbing and car-ramming attack earlier in the day that killed four people and injured two others in the southern city of Beersheba.

“We will also pursue and apprehend those who help them,” Bennett said in a statement, after meeting with Public Security Minister Omer Barlev and Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai.

Witnesses say that the attacker, identified as Mohammad Ghaleb Abu al-Qi’an, an Arab Israeli citizen from the Bedouin village of Hura, about 14 kilometers east of Beersheba, stabbed a woman to death at a gas station in Beersheba Tuesday. He then entered his car, which he used to ram and kill a bicyclist. He then exited his car again and stabbed several more people at a shopping center, killing a man and a woman before finally being fatally shot by two passersby. Abu al-Qi’an, 34, was a former teacher who was jailed for four years after attempting to join the Islamic State group in Syria. He was released in 2019.

The victims were named as Laura Yitzhak, 43, a mother of three from Beersheba; Rabbi Moshe Kravitzky, 50, a father of four and director of a Chabad House in Beersheba; Menahem Yehezkel, 67, a brother to four from Beersheba; and Doris Yahbas, 49, a mother of three from Moshav Gilat.

No group was claimed responsibility for the attack, which was praised by Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades. The attack was widely condemned in Israel, including by leaders of the predominantly Arab Ra’am and Joint List parties in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

Shabtai, the police chief, told reporters that the police would be deployed throughout the country to “prevent copycat attacks.”