BICOM

A 21-year-old ultra-Orthodox Jewish man was stabbed yesterday in an attack near the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City.

The man was stabbed in the back with a screwdriver by a man thought to be an Arab assailant. The attacker fled the scene and is still being pursued, while the victim was treated at the scene and then transported to a Jerusalem hospital. A paramedic who helped provide care for the man at the scene of the attack said to Haaretz that the victim “told us that while he was walking toward the Old City he felt a sharp blow in his back. His condition is moderate, and he was transferred directly to the operating room.”

Meanwhile, Israel Police Spokesman Micky Rosenfeld confirmed that the incident was being viewed as a terror attack. He said, “We are looking into this as a terrorist attack and Border Police and regular patrol units are in the area searching for the suspect.”

Yesterday’s stabbing follows a similar incident in November, when a 32-year-old Jewish man was stabbed with a screwdriver in the same location. Following that attack, Hamas called the incident “a natural response to the crimes of the occupation.” Meanwhile, just two weeks ago, two Border Police officers were stabbed near the Lion’s Gate of the Old City and received light wounds.

The knife attacks come against the backdrop of serious violence in Jerusalem in October and November, with the Temple Mount in the Old City a focal point of tensions. A number of Israeli civilians were killed by Palestinians during the violence, which included two instances in which local Palestinians ploughed their vehicles into Israeli commuters and pedestrians. In the most deadly recent attack, five worshippers at a Jerusalem synagogue were murdered while praying after two Palestinian Jerusalem residents entered the building wielding knives and axes.