JERUSALEM — Two assailants armed with a gun and an ax attacked passers-by in an Israeli town on Thursday night, killing at least three, according to initial reports from the police and emergency services.
The police described the assault as a suspected terrorist attack.
The attack followed a wave of violence by Arab assailants that had already killed 14 people in Israel since mid-March. Another Israeli man who was guarding a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank was killed by Palestinian gunmen last week.
Several more people were reported to be wounded in Thursday’s attack in Elad, an ultra-Orthodox town in central Israel.
The assailants appeared to have escaped; the police said they had set up checkpoints along several roads and officers in a police helicopter were searching for a vehicle seen fleeing the scene.
The attack took place just after nightfall, at the end of Israel’s Independence Day, marking the foundation of the state in 1948. Palestinians mark the establishment of Israel as the Nakba, or catastrophe.
Emergency responders said they found the first fatality by a traffic circle in Elad and two more in a nearby park.
“When we arrived we realized that this was a complex scene,” said Alon Rizkan, a paramedic with the Magen David Adom ambulance service. He described the three people who were pronounced dead at the scene as men, all aged around 40.
Several more wounded men were transferred to hospitals, he said.
