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Itongadol.-Two people were injured in a stabbing attack in the Rami Levi supermarket, in the Mishor Adumim industrial park, located in the West Bank, just outside of Jerusalem.
Around 4:15 p.m. on Wednesday evening two Palestinians walked empty handed in the supermarket, past the security guard that stood by the sliding glass doors.
One of them stole a knife from the deli and stabbed two of the customers in the store. An off duty security guard shot the terrorist in the legs. The two victims, Israeli men in their fifties as well as the terrorist were lightly to moderately wounded and rushed to Hadassah Ein Karem Medical Center in Jerusalem. One of them was a paramedic. Two Palestinians were arrested in connection with the attack.
As soon as the shots rang out customers left their groceries and shopping carts and fled the scene. Police immediately closed off the area.
Paramedic Avi Levinberg from United Hatzaleh arrived at the scene within eight minutes of the attack on his motorcycle.
“We saw two injured men inside the supermarket, they were wounded in their upper bodies from the knife. The terrorist was shot in the leg,” he said. “We started to give treatment.”
“There were two terrorists,” he said, adding that police were exploring the possibility that the third terrorist fled the scene.
Benny Kashriel, the mayor of the adjacent Ma’aleh Adumim settlement said that the third terrorist had driven the other two to the scene.
He called on the Palestinian Authority to ensure that no further attacks occur in the industrial park, which employes 2,500 Palestinians who work alongside Israelis.
Both Israelis and Palestinians work and shop in the supermarket.
The owners of the supermarket chain, Rami Levy said that he had done everything to ensure the safety of his customers.
The terrorists, he said, had attempted to destroy a place of coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. “I won’t let them succeed,” he said.
As he spoke, his employees were busy cleaning up the supermarket. They washed down the blood from the floor and returned the overturned groceries to the shelves.
The store re-opened two hours after the attack.
Security forces said the terrorist who carried out the attack in the supermarket is a 16-year-old minor from Azariya – a Palestinian village near Ma\’aleh Adumim – who has no previous record of arrests. Two additional suspects are under arrest, and security forces are checking whether they are tied to the attack.