An Israeli policewoman died Monday after a knife attack outside a police station in East Jerusalem, the Israeli-annexed Palestinian part of the holy city, killing her 16-year-old attacker, Israeli police said.
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In Jerusalem, “a terrorist armed with a knife arrived at the Shalem police station and stabbed a border police officer (…). The border police forces neutralized the terrorist by firing,” the police said in a press release on Monday morning.
In the middle of the afternoon, police announced that the officer had succumbed to her injuries after the attacker, a teenager, “fatally stabbed” her.
The 20-year-old victim, who also has American citizenship, had arrived in Israel two years earlier, police said.
She lived on Kibbutz Saad near Gaza, in the area targeted by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas during the October 7 attack.
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The Israeli emergency service Magen David Adom also treated another member of the security forces, also 20, who was slightly injured in the knife attack.
According to Israeli police, the attacker was a young Palestinian from Al-Issaouiya, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem occupied by Israel since 1967. “Another suspect” in connection with the attack was arrested nearby, the same source said.
On Monday morning, the attack area near the Damascus Gate, one of the entrances to the Old City, was cordoned off and Israeli police chief Yaakov Shabtaï went to the scene.
On October 12, a Palestinian from East Jerusalem opened fire at the same site, wounding two soldiers before being killed.
And on October 30, another Palestinian from East Jerusalem was killed after stabbing and wounding an Israeli police officer not far away.
There has been a lot of tension in East Jerusalem, which includes the Old City, since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, sparked by an unprecedented deadly attack on Israeli soil by the Islamist movement on October 7 .
“Our police officers have been on the front line for a month,” emphasized Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir on site, pleading for “zero tolerance” and calling for the attacker’s house to be destroyed – as Israel regularly does for the perpetrators of such attacks.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, more than 150 Palestinians have been killed by fire from Israeli soldiers or settlers in the occupied West Bank since October 7.
Authorities said at least 1,400 people died on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, killed on the same day of Hamas’ unprecedented attack in Israel.
According to Hamas, more than 10,000 people, mostly civilians, including more than 4,000 children, were killed in devastating Israeli bombings in the Gaza Strip.