Tel Aviv construction site (illustration)
Tel Aviv construction site (illustration)Serge Attal/Flash 90

An initial investigation into the terror attack in Tel Aviv on Thursday afternoon, in which an Arab terrorist stabbed five Israelis wounding them lightly, shows the assailant apparently was employed at a construction site adjacent to the site of the attack.

Police stated that the terrorist was a construction worker who took advantage of his access to Tel Aviv to conduct the attack armed with a screwdriver, according to the results of the investigation thus far.

Yarkon district commander Brig. Gen. Yehuda Dahan of the police revealed that "it is possible that he (the attacker) worked in one of the construction sites and went out to conduct an attack in Tel Aviv."

The attack took place near Azrieli Towers and the Kirya area, in a very central area of the coastal metropolis.

Describing the attack, Dahan said, "around 3 p.m. a call was received at the 100 (emergency police) hotline about a suspect who ran with a knife or screwdriver on Menachem Begin Street."

"He stabbed five passersby with a screwdriver, one of them a female soldier. He also tried to steal the weapon (of the soldier). The female soldier sat down on the weapon and an IDF officer identified the suspect and neutralized him."

As noted by Dahan, an Air Force officer and policemen who were at the scene chased the terrorist to nearby Mozes street, where they shot and killed him.

The stabbing in Tel Aviv was not the only such attack on Thursday. Several hours earlier a yeshiva student was seriously wounded and another man lightly wounded in a stabbing attack at Jerusalem's Ammunition Hill light rail station. A manhunt was launched to try and track down the attacker.

Less than an hour after the Tel Aviv attack another stabbing took place in Kiryat Arba, at the gate of the town adjacent to Hevron. A 25-year-old Jewish man was seriously wounded, and the Arab terrorist who attacked him fled into Hevron.