DRIVE-BY TERROR
Tel Aviv terror attack – Arab gunman kills five in drive-by shooting amid ‘wave’ of horror atrocities
A GUNMAN killed at least five people before he was fatally shot by cops in Israel's third deadly attack of its kind in a week.
Officials said the shooter opened fire in Bnei Brak, a Jewish ultra-Orthodox suburb on the outskirts of Israel's commercial capital Tel Aviv.
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It comes after two other similar terrorist attacks by Arab-Israeli citizens who were supporters of ISIS, according to authorities.
"Israel is facing a wave of murderous Arab terror," Prime Minister Naftali Bennett tweeted after the latest attack last night.
Amateur video broadcast on Israeli television stations showed a man dressed in black and pointing an assault rifle walking down a road in Bnei Brak.
Israeli media reports said the assailant was a 27-year-old Palestinian from a village near the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank. Police have yet to provide information about the suspect.
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No motive for the attack has yet been given and there was no immediate claim of responsibility.
The Israeli military announced it would be deploying additional troops to the West Bank, and the police chief raised the national readiness level to its highest.
The attack raised the number of people killed by Arab gunmen in Israel over the past week to 11.
In Bnei Brak, witnesses said the gunman began shooting at apartment balconies and then at people on the street and in a car.
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The Magen David Adom ambulance service said he shot dead five people.
"The terrorist was liquidated," ambulance spokesman Zaki Heller said. Police said officers fatally shot the gunman.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the attack, saying the killing of Israeli or Palestinian civilians "only leads to further deterioration of the situation and instability, which we all strive to achieve, especially as we are approaching the holy month of Ramadan and Christian and Jewish holidays".
He said the violence "confirms that permanent, comprehensive and just peace is the shortest way to provide security and stability for the Palestinian and Israeli peoples".
No Palestinian groups immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. The Islamist militant group Hamas praised the "heroic operation", but stopped short of claiming responsibility.
Israeli officials had warned about a surge in assaults in the run-up to April, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan - a period in which violence has surged in the past, with East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in a 1967 war, a focal point of tension.
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"I live on Hashneim Street in Bnei Brak and I was at home when I heard gunshots," paramedic Menachem Englander said, according to a tweet posted by Magen David Adom.
"I immediately went out to the street and saw a terrorist pointing a weapon at me. By a miracle, his weapon jammed and he couldn't shoot."
Last week, an Arab citizen of Israel killed four people in a stabbing and car ramming attack in the southern city of Beersheba, before he was shot dead by a passerby. Israeli authorities said he was an Islamic State sympathiser.
On Sunday, as an Israeli-Arab summit convened in southern Israel, an Arab assailant, a resident of a town in the north of the country, shot and killed two police officers in Hadera, a city some 30miles north of Tel Aviv. Other officers shot and killed him.
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Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Hadera attack.
All of the attacks have come just ahead of Ramadan, which begins later this week and as Israel hosted a high-profile meeting this week between the foreign ministers of four Arab nations and the United States.
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