TPC Staff
The Palestine Chronicle / October 6, 2024
The executor of the operation was identified as 29-year-old Ahmed Saeed al-Aqabi, from the town of Al-Qurain, in the occupied Naqab (Negev).
An Israeli soldier was killed and at least 24 others were injured, some critically, in a stabbing and shooting operation near the central bus station in Beersheba (Bir Al-Saba) in southern Israel.
According to Israeli police, the attacker was killed, and officers are searching the city for any potential accomplices.
The executor was identified as 29-year-old Ahmed Saeed al-Aqabi, from the town of Al-Qurain, in the Naqab.
The Israeli Army Radio reported that Al-Aqabi stabbed the soldier, seized her weapon, and then opened fire on others.
The Israeli Ambulance Authority confirmed that the attack took place at two separate locations.
For its part, the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth quoted the mother of one of the soldiers involved, who said her daughter, along with other soldiers, had hidden in a bathroom during the attack and was unable to make contact during the incident.
Al-Aqabi was reportedly a relative of Muhannad al-Aqabi, who conducted a similar shooting attack in Beersheba in 2015, killing an Israeli soldier and injuring several others.
Ben-Gvir faces backlash
Meanwhile, Yedioth Ahronoth reported that Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir faced criticism during a visit to the site of the operation.
Jewish settlers reportedly called for his resignation and accused him of failure to prevent the attack.
In response, Ben-Gvir advocated for harsher measures, calling for the demolition of homes belonging to those he labelled as “disloyal” to Israel and urging the passing of legislation to deport the families of Palestinian citizens accused of terrorism.
‘Response to ongoing massacres’
The Popular Resistance Committees blessed in a statement the “heroic operation”, which “comes in response to the ongoing massacres and genocidal war in Palestine and Lebanon.”
The Committees also mourned the executor, “who insisted on joining the ranks of honour, dignity, and martyrdom.”
According to the statement, the operation was “a message of fire and gunpowder to the Zionist enemy entity and its criminal leaders, affirming that the revolutionaries of our people and our resistance fighters in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran do not abandon their sacred and obligatory vengeance for their martyrs and leaders”.
The Committees also called “on all free resistance fighters in all the arenas and fronts of confrontation with the Zionist enemy to escalate the resistance”.
