A man has been killed and four others wounded in a stabbing attack in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, officials said.
Israeli police said the attack took place at a bus and train station on Monday and that “a security guard and a civilian at the scene” had “neutralised” the suspected assailant.
“Paramedics and EMTs have pronounced the death of a man around 70 years old and are providing medical treatment to and evacuating four injured individuals,” Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency service said.
It added that a man and a woman, both aged about 30 years, as well as a 15-year-old boy, were seriously injured in the attack.
Police said that the assailant was an Israeli citizen from a nearby Arab Druze town who had returned from abroad in May and that the attack was still being investigated.
Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut, reporting from Jordan’s capital Amman, said that the man who had been killed was a Palestinian citizen of Israel from a village in the north.
“Members of the Druze community have condemned this attack,” said Salhut, adding that the motive was “unclear”. Meanwhile, the 15-year-old who was wounded in the attack was said to be “in pretty severe condition” at an intensive care unit in a hospital near Haifa.
“There have been politicians who’ve been speaking out, saying that this is a direct response to Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership,” said Salhut. “Remember that you also had members of the far-right government … who were calling to arm more Israeli settlers and citizens as a result of the rising number of attacks.”
Images posted on social media showed several emergency personnel tending to the injured, who were seen lying on the ground, as several ambulances were parked nearby.
The attack came as negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas over Gaza’s ceasefire stalled after the deal’s first phase ended over the weekend.
On Sunday, Israel blocked the entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza after a disagreement with Hamas over extending the ceasefire.
