Dubai: A Palestinian man fatally stabbed a British woman on Occupied Jerusalem’s transit network on Friday, Israeli police said. The incident occurred in a train carriage on the light rail network near Occupied Jerusalem’s municipality building and the walled Old City.
TV footage showed blood on the floor of the carriage with police officers restraining a man and carrying him away.
Israeli police said the victim was a 25-year-old British national, though it was initially unclear whether she also held Israeli citizenship.
Mentally unstable
The Shin Bet domestic security service identified the assailant as 57-year-old Jamil Tamimi and said he was a Palestinian from Occupied East Jerusalem with mental health problems who was convicted in 2011 for sexually assaulting his daughter.
“This is one of many instances where a Palestinian suffering personal strife ... chooses to carry out an attack in order to find release for his problems,” the Shin Bet statement said.
It added that the assailant had previously tried to commit suicide by attempting to swallow a razor blade. Since October 2015, Israel and the Palestinian territories have been rocked by a wave of violence due to an uptick in Jewish raids on Al Haram Al Sharif.
Palestinians fear that the decades-old status quo at the holy shrine of Al Haram Al Sharif in occupied East Jerusalem will be shattered by far right Jewish groups encouraging illegal raids.
Jews are allowed to visit the shrine, but they are strictly banned from praying there.
Israel captured and annexed the eastern part of Jerusalem in 1967, but the move has never been recognised by the international community.
