Beersheba (Israel) (AFP) - A man wielding a knife stabbed several people and ran over another in southern Israel on Tuesday, killing four, in one of the deadliest attacks in the country in recent years.
Prime Minister Natfali Bennett promised a crackdown on "terrorists" following the bloodshed outside a gas station and a shopping centre in the southern city of Beersheba.
Police have not officially identified the suspect but multiple Israeli media outlets reported the attacker was a Bedouin man in his thirties who had previously been convicted over seeking ties with the Islamic State group.
The attack began at a gas station in Beersheba, shortly past 4:00 pm, according to police and the Magen David Adom emergency medical responders.
Police said the suspect got out of his car at the station and stabbed a woman.
He then returned to his vehicle and drove towards a nearby shopping centre, where he rammed the car into a man in his 60s who was riding a bicycle.
After the car-ramming, the suspect left his car and attacked others with a knife, stabbing at least two people.
Police said that "civilians who were at the scene fired (at the suspect) and neutralised him", without specifying his condition.
An MDA spokesman told AFP that four people had been killed.
Bennett met with his internal security minister and police chief shortly after the attack, his office said.
Act 'against terrorists'
The premier then praised those who shot the alleged assailant, saying they "showed resourcefulness and courage and prevented further casualties".
"Security forces are on high alert.We will work hard against terrorists.We will pursue them as well and those who help them," the Israeli premier tweeted.
Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, released a statement that did not claim the attack but blamed it on Israel's treatments of Palestinians.
Speaking to a Hamas-controlled radio station, group spokesman Hazem Qassem said the "operation is a response to the policy of ethnic displacement practiced by Israel against our Palestinian people inside the occupied territories".
The Times of Israel said the suspect had previously served four years in prison for seeking to form a group that planned to join IS in Syria and preaching jihadist ideology.
Israel's security services could not immediately confirm those details.
Stabbing and car-ramming attacks, often by lone Palestinian assailants, are common in Israel.
But much of the recent violence has occurred in east Jerusalem, the Palestinian sector of the city annexed by Israel after the 1967 Six Day War, or in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since the same year.
Attacks resulting in multiple Israeli fatalities have also been rare in recent years, while Israel's south, including Beersheba, has largely been spared such violence.
The region has seen unrest involving Bedouin, who are part of Israel's 20 percent Arab minority and who have clashed with security forces, typically over land disputes.
Mansour Abbas, the leader of Israel's Islamist Raam party that backs Bennett's government and was widely supported by Bedouin voters in elections last year, denounced the attack.
"The Raam party condemns the criminal attack in Beersheba and sends its condolences to the families of those killed," said a party statement posted on his personal Facebook page.
The local council in Hura, a Bedouin community near Beersheba, also condemned the attack as "criminal and terrorist act".
