Warning: This article contains video and images of extreme violence.
A gunman opened fire at the central bus station in Bir al-Saba (Beer Sheva), a city in the south of present-day Israel, on Sunday evening, killing an Israeli soldier and wounding up to 11 other people.
The assailant shot and killed a soldier and then “snatched his M-16 rifle” before opening fire on the others, most of whom were “members of Israel’s security forces,” Israel’s Ynet reported. Walla! News reported that four of the injured were soldiers.
Israeli police shot and killed the assailant.
Israeli media named the dead soldier as 19-year-old Sergeant Omri Levi. He was a member of the Israeli army’s Golani brigade.
There has been confusion and contradictory reports regarding the identity of the assailant.
Both Reuters and Ynet, citing Palestinian media, claimed he was Isam al-Araj from Shuafat, a neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem whose Palestinian residents have frequently been targeted with violence by Israeli occupation forces and settlers. This information had not been confirmed by any official source. It was also not apparent which Palestinian media had reported the claim.
The Jerusalem Post later claimed that the Israeli army had named the attacker as Muhannad Al-Okabi, from the Bedouin town of Hura in the southern Naqab (Negev) region of present-day Israel. The same name was reported in other Israeli media, including Maariv.
Death-chanting mob
During the incident, a security guard shot 29-year-old Haftom Zarhum, an Eritrean refugee who was “misidentified” as a “terrorist,” according to Haaretz. Zarhum later died of his injuries.
Zarhum came to Beer Sheva on Sunday to procure a visa.
Video captured by bystanders and posted to social media shows a mob of onlookers, including Israeli soldiers and police, kicking Zarhum in the head, pinning him under a chair and throwing a bench at him as he writhes on the floor, clearly in pain and bleeding severely.
