Israeli rabbi killed in Petah Tikva knife attack
- Published
A rabbi has been stabbed to death by a Palestinian man in the Israeli city of Petah Tikva, Israeli police say.
Shai Ohayon, a 39-year-old father of four, was attacked at a road junction, reportedly after getting off a bus from a religious college where he studied.
A suspect was chased by a passer-by and later arrested by police. He is said to be a 46-year-old from a village near Nablus, in the occupied West Bank.
Investigators said they were treating the incident as a terrorist attack.
The Shin Bet security service said it was looking into whether the suspect had a history of mental illness, but that it was "too soon to tell" if that was relevant, .
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered his condolences to Rabbi Ohayon's family.
"The heart aches. My wife Sarah and myself are hugging the family, a wife and four children who are left without a father," he wrote on Twitter. "We will demolish the terrorist's house and work for carrying out the most severe punishment possible."
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Earlier on Wednesday, Mr Netanyahu shared an article on Facebook that said no Israeli civilian had been killed in a terrorist attack for 12 months for the first time in 56 years, .
Since 2015, dozens of Israelis have been killed in a wave of stabbings, shootings and car-rammings, predominantly by Palestinians, in Israel and the West Bank.
Hundreds of Palestinians - most of them assailants, Israel says - have also been killed in that period, according to news agencies.
Others have been killed in clashes with Israeli troops.