TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — The militant Islamic State group on Monday claimed responsibility after a pair of Arab gunmen killed two people and wounded four in central Israel before being killed by police.
The two killed in Sunday night’s attack were Israeli police officers, authorities said.
It was the second deadly attack carried out by Arab attackers in an Israeli city in less than a week before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. On Tuesday, a lone attacker inspired by the Islamic State group killed four people in a stabbing in southern Israel before being killed by passers-by, police said.
The attacks threatened to cast a shadow over a meeting of foreign ministers in the Negev desert, where the Iranian nuclear deal was expected to top the agenda. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett rushed to the scene of the shooting on Sunday evening.
The Islamic State group claims responsibility for the attack in a report to the Aamaq news agency, saying that two IS members killed two Israeli security forces.
“The heart is broken” by the attacks, Bennett said Monday. The Israeli prime minister issued the statement from home after he tested positive for the coronavirus. He called on people to be vigilant. Police would set up checkpoints on the main roads on Tuesday.
Ramadan is expected to start on Saturday. Last year, clashes between Israeli police and Muslim protesters during the holy month sparked an 11-day war between Israel and the Hamas rulers of Gaza.
Condemnation for the attacks poured in from governments around the world.
“Such senseless acts of violence and murder have no place in society,” tweeted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who attended the meeting in the Negev with the foreign ministers of four Arab countries and Israel’s foreign minister. Yair Lapid.
Hamas, the Islamist militant group that rules Gaza, praised the attack as a “heroic operation”.
Footage from security cameras circulating on Israeli media shows two bearded men appearing to open fire in the town of Hadera before being shot. An Israeli official said two members of the counter-terrorism unit of the Israeli Border Police were in a restaurant near the attack, ran outside and killed the attackers.
The Israeli rescue service MADA confirmed the deaths of a man and a woman and said four were injured, two of them seriously. It has released videos showing large numbers of police cars and ambulances in the area.
IS is mainly active in Iraq and Syria, where it has recently stepped up attacks on security forces using sleeper cells, despite its territorial defeat more than three years ago. The extremist group has also claimed past attacks on Israeli troops and has operations in Afghanistan and in Asia and beyond.
