One killed, another wounded in Israel mall stabbing attack

At least one person was killed and another wounded in a stabbing attack in a shopping centre in northern Israel, and police said the suspect was shot dead.

The attack took place on the second floor of the Hutzot Karmiel Mall in the northern Israeli city of Karmiel on Wednesday.

Israel’s national ambulance service said medics were treating two men in their 20s, one in a very serious condition and the other fully conscious.

Gal Zeid, a spokesperson for Israel’s Galilee Medical Center, later said doctors pronounced one man dead after failing to resuscitate him. The second person was admitted to the hospital’s intensive care unit.

Video footage from the scene shared on social media, verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking agency, showed people in the mall trying to give medical care to one of the wounded victims, who was wearing a green uniform.

Police said the suspect, who was not named, was “neutralised”, and they were investigating the incident as a possible “terror attack”. The alleged attacker was identified as an Arab citizen of Israel from the town of Nahf, according to police.

The mall’s entrances were closed by police as they conducted extensive search and combing operations in the area, Israeli radio reported.

Israeli media quoted Karmiel police chief Yitzhak Abuhatzira as saying that members of the suspect’s family had been arrested, including his mother, brother and sister.

Tensions between Israel and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have spiked during Israel’s war on Gaza as Israeli forces have carried out near daily raids on the territory. More than 500 Palestinians have been killed and 5,300 wounded during the raids.

Reporting from Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh said: “It’s impossible to separate what happens inside Israel with regard to the stabbing attack from the dynamics of occupation in the West Bank or the war in Gaza.”

“Tensions have been rising and they have been reaching boiling point,” Odeh said, also referring to the frequent army raids on Palestinian groups, rampages by Jewish settlers in Palestinian villages, and deadly Palestinian street attacks.

Peace Now, an anti-settlement watchdog, said on Wednesday that Israeli authorities recently approved the seizure of 12.7 square kilometres (4.9 square miles) of land in the occupied West Bank – the largest appropriation in more than three decades.

Since the start of the year, Israel has declared 23.7 square kilometres (9.15 square miles) in the Palestinian territory as state land, it said.

“All this pushes Palestinians in despair and anger towards Israeli policies that push them out of their land and make their life unbearable, no matter where they are,” Odeh added.

On Wednesday, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said that at least 37,953 people have been killed and 87,266 injured in Israel’s war on Gaza since October 7.