Four people were killed and several injured in a ramming and stabbing attack at a shopping center in Beersheba on Tuesday.
According to police, the assailant first stabbed a woman at a nearby gas station in Südstadt, then drove his car to a cyclist, got out and stabbed several people in a large shopping center before being killed by the bus driver and other pedestrians.
The cyclist and two of those who were stabbed at the mall later died from their injuries.
The killer was later identified as Mohammad Galeb Abu al-Qian, 34, a former terrorist convict from the Bedouin city of Hura in the Negev.
According to Zaka’s emergency services, Abu al-Qian died from his injuries.
An ambulance said a woman in her 40s who was stabbed by the assailant was pronounced dead on the spot.
The other five were taken to the nearby Soroka Medical Center.
The hospital reported that three of them passed away from their wounds soon after being admitted..
The other two are in hospital in serious but stable condition.
The terrorist group Hamas praised the knife attack and said it congratulated the perpetrators of the heroic operation in occupied Beersheba.
“The crimes of occupation were met with heroic operations: stabbings, assaults and shootings,” Hamas spokesman Abd al-Latif al-Kanu told Hamas’ official radio.
However, the terrorist group did not say the killer was a member.