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Tel Aviv Shooting Leaves 2 Dead and 5 Wounded Tel Aviv Shooting Leaves 2 Dead and 7 Wounded
(35 minutes later)
RAMALLAH, West Bank — The police in Tel Aviv were searching for a masked gunman on Friday who killed at least two people and wounded five others in a crowded bar in the city center. It was not clear whether the attack was an act of terrorism or was criminal in nature. RAMALLAH, West Bank — A gunman opened fire on a crowded sidewalk in the center of Tel Aviv on Friday afternoon, killing two people and wounding at least seven others. The assault unleashed mayhem among Israelis who had been out on Dizengoff Street, one of the city’s major commercial arteries, and it led to an intense manhunt by the authorities.
Israeli security forces rushed into nearby streets searching for the gunman and cordoned off the area, as witnesses comforted one another outside the bar. The gunman, who in video footage appeared to be dressed in black and wearing glasses, opened fire on businesses that included a pub, a cafe and a sushi restaurant — but his main target appeared to be the pub, the Simta, whose manager was killed, Israeli news agencies reported.
The gunman targeted at least two other businesses, a sushi restaurant and a cafe, although initial reports indicated that the casualties had come from the bar. The gunman’s motivations were not immediately clear, though Israeli news media reported that a Quran had been found in a bag the gunman had left in a grocery store before he began his rampage.
Two of the wounded were in serious condition, the Israeli news media reported, and all had been taken to hospitals in Tel Aviv, Micky Rosenfeld, a spokesman for the Israeli police, said on Twitter. “I heard something like 10 shots,” a man who gave his name only as Avi told Ynet, an Israeli news website. “I was next to one of the cafes. I saw people running in the street and wounded sprawled on the street.”
Israeli security forces rushed into nearby streets searching for the gunman. One police officer, an assault rifle hanging from her shoulder, leapt onto a man’s bicycle — shouting, “Get out of the way!” — to navigate the crowded streets, according to Ben Hartman, a reporter for The Jerusalem Post who lives nearby and rushed to the scene.
Dozens of people gathered as plainclothes security officers, riot police officers and intelligence agents cordoned off and canvassed the area, which was strewn with shards of glass. Several of the officers presented business owners with court orders allowing them to seize security-camera footage.
Several stunned witnesses tried to comfort one another.
The wounded were taken to hospitals in Tel Aviv, Micky Rosenfeld, a spokesman for the Israeli police, said on Twitter; the Israeli news media said that at least two of the wounded were in serious condition. The police, including counterterrorism units, were concentrating their search in the center of the city and were examining video-surveillance footage, Mr. Rosenfeld said.
Israel has experienced a surge in Palestinian violence recently that has included stabbings, shootings and vehicular attacks, but the coastal city of Tel Aviv has been mostly untouched.Israel has experienced a surge in Palestinian violence recently that has included stabbings, shootings and vehicular attacks, but the coastal city of Tel Aviv has been mostly untouched.
The police, including counterterrorism units, were concentrating their search in the central part of the city, said Mr. Rosenfeld, who added that the police were also examining surveillance footage. The gunman’s approach was similar to the “behavior of recent ISIS attackers,” Daniel Nisman, the president of the Levantine Group, a geopolitical risk consultancy, said on Twitter, referring to the Islamic State.
The gunman, who was dressed in black, sat on a bench outside the bar, where he apparently waited for it to fill up before taking out a weapon from his backpack. “Something is very weird here,” Mr. Nisman said in a telephone interview. “It is not a classic Palestinian terror attack,” he said, in which a gunman keeps firing until he is shot by the police.
“I heard something like 10 shots,” said one man who gave his name as Avi to Ynet, an Israeli news website. “I was next to one of the cafes. I saw people running in the street and wounded sprawled on the street.” But Mr. Nisman also said that the attack did not fit the pattern of an assault by a gang because the shooting appeared indiscriminate.
The gunman’s approach was similar to the “behavior of recent ISIS attackers,” Daniel Nisman, the president of the Levantine Group, a geopolitical risk consultancy, said on Twitter. Security footage shared on social media appeared to show that the gunman had stopped in a grocery store before the attack to pick up and examine a bag of nuts. He appeared to have placed a bag or a backpack on a shopping cart, removed his gun, loaded it, stepped outside the store and then opened fire from the sidewalk.
Mr. Nisman was not at the scene, but he based his assessment on information from his cousin, who was a witness, and from Israeli news media accounts. Mr. Nisman and other Israeli security experts said the weapon seen in the video footage appeared to be a Swedish-made submachine gun.
“Something is very weird here,” Mr. Nisman said in a telephone interview. “It is not a classic Palestinian terror attack,” he said, in which a gunman usually keeps firing until he is shot by the police. In another video, which was also circulated online, patrons at the bar fled in panic — one man dashing under a table — as the gunman appeared.
Referring to the possibility that the attack was criminal in nature, Mr. Nisman said that gangs in Israel usually targeted specific victims, and did not shoot indiscriminately into crowds. The attacker appears to have initially fired single rounds, before unleashing automatic fire, Israel’s Channel 2 news station reported. He replaced the magazine of his firearm at least once during the attack.
“We realized within a second that it was a shooting,” said Assaf ben Ezra, 40, the owner of a restaurant called the Meatpack, which is across the street from the Simta pub.
Mr. ben Ezra opened the back door of his restaurant so that fleeing customers could move away from the street. He later emerged to see one of the victims lying on the ground, bleeding.
“I ran to help,” Mr. ben Ezra said. “He was able to ask us, ‘Where is my dog?’ ”
Another resident, Haim Pinto, 40, the owner of a nearby jewelry store, said a woman ran toward him screaming: “There’s a terrorist. Run!” Mr. Pinto hid in his store’s bathroom and emerged after the shooting stopped.
“When I walked out, I saw the mess: a person lying on the road, full of blood, and the other store near the pub destroyed, with all its windows blown out,” he said.