More deaths in Palestinian ‘Day of Rage’

Palestinian men armed with knives and a gun killed at least three people and wounded several others in a string of attacks in Jerusalem and near Tel Aviv, on a ‘day of rage’ declared by Palestinian groups.

With the worst unrest in years in Israel and the Palestinian territories showing no sign of abating, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened an emergency meeting of his security cabinet to discuss what police said would be new operational plans.

Officials said Israel’s public security minister was considering whether to seal off Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem, home of many of the assailants of the past two weeks, from the rest of the city.

Palestinians in East Jerusalem can travel in Israel without restrictions. Israel annexed East Jerusalem after a 1967 war in a move that is not recognised internationally.

In Jerusalem, two Palestinians shot and stabbed passengers on a bus, killing two and injuring four, police said. One of the assailants was killed, an ambulance service spokesman said, and the other captured.

Minutes later, a Palestinian rammed his car into a bus stop in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of the city, police said.

A surveillance video showed him getting out and hacking at pedestrians with a cleaver until he was shot dead by a passerby.

One of the Israelis he had attacked died and six others were wounded, police said.

In all, seven Israelis and 28 Palestinians, including 10 alleged attackers and eight children, have died in almost two weeks of street attacks and security crackdowns.

In Raanana, just north of Tel Aviv, a Palestinian man stabbed and lightly wounded an Israeli on a shopping street during the morning rush hour, officials and witnesses said.

Within an hour, another Palestinian had stabbed and wounded four people in Raanana, police said.

And in the carpark of a furniture store in northern Israel, a Jewish man, who police said had intended to carry out a revenge attack, stabbed and wounded a fellow Jew, mistaking him for an Arab.

The main Palestinian factions, including the Western-backed Fatah movement and the militant Hamas group, had declared yesterday a ‘day of rage’ across the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, accusing Israel of “escalating its crimes against our people”.