Arab with knife (illustration)
Arab with knife (illustration)Flash 90

One of the armed security personnel on scene at the stabbing attack on a Tel Aviv bus Wednesday morning, in which at least two people were critically wounded and around four others moderately wounded, recalled his harrowing experience on Reshet Bet radio.

The man, the intelligence coordinator in the enforcement administration for foreign workers, said "when I realized I was on the scene of a terror attack, I tried to neutralize him (the Arab terrorist) due to the fact that I was armed."

"I saw people running. I asked 'who is the terrorist?,' because I had trouble identifying him," said the man. "And then I saw a youth, dressed in jeans and holding in his hand a knife with a 20 centimeter (nearly 8 inches) blade, trying to stab passersby around him."

Despite being armed and faced with an attacking terrorist, the man was unable to act due to the surrounding passersby.

"I tried to shoot him but had trouble doing so because there were passersby around him and I feared harming innocents. I shot in the air, I tried to warn the passersby, and shouted 'terrorist,' but it didn't help," he said.

"In front of my eyes he stabbed an elderly man who was there. Afterwards he continued on to a young girl who was in shock. I shot in the air again trying to snap her out of it - but I didn't succeed. In front of my eyes he raised the knife and stabbed her until she collapsed," related the man.

After the terrorist fled to the less populous adjacent street, he said members of the Israel Prisons Service's elite Nachshon unit were able to shoot him in the leg and arrested him.

The attack is the most recent of its kind in Tel Aviv since 20-year-old IDF soldier Almog Shiloni hy''d was stabbed repeatedly by an Arab terrorist at the Hahagana train station last November, and later died of his wounds.