Border police officer injured in stabbing at Damascus Gate, attacker killed

A border police officer was slightly injured in a stabbing attack at the Damascus Gate to Jerusalem's Old City on Sunday evening. The attacker, identified as Ziad Abu Subeih, 33, from the Bedouin town of Ar'ara Banegev near Beersheba, attacked the officer with a sharp object before attempting to flee into the Old City, police said. Other border police officers shot and killed the attacker at the scene.

Magen David Adom paramedics arrived promptly and provided immediate medical attention to the injured police officer, who is in his twenties and was fully conscious. The officer, who suffered an injury to his upper body, was taken to a hospital.

The attack follows a recent escalation in violence that also included the killing of an Israeli soldier at a West Bank bus stop and an armed attack on a Jordanian truck driver at the Allenby border crossing. The incidents coincide with a large-scale counterterrorism operation by the Israeli military in the northern West Bank and rising tensions around the Temple Mount.

The terrorist group Hamas praised the stabbing as a “natural reaction” to perceived Israeli actions, but did not claim responsibility for the attack. Israel remains at war with Hamas following the October 7 attack that killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages. Since then, Israeli forces have arrested over 5,000 Palestinians across the West Bank, including more than 2,000 linked to Hamas.