Two dead in shooting at Tel Aviv bar

Tel Aviv: Two people were killed and six others injured in a shooting attack in central Tel Aviv on Friday afternoon, Israeli police said. Two of the wounded are thought to be a in serious condition. Two of the injured remain in intensive care at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov hospital.

Earlier on Friday, Israel handed over to their families the bodies of 23 Palestinians killed during recent attacks on Israelis, in an apparent bid to ease tensions.

Nati Shakked, owner of the Simta bar on Dizengoff Street, which was hit by the gunfire, said the assassin had patiently waited on a bench outside for the venue to fill up before calmly taking a machine gun out of a bag and “shooting in every direction”.

Police say there’s a massive manhunt for the gunman.

Undercover units and counter-terrorism units were working in different areas of Tel Aviv, Mr Rosenfeld said, adding that no specific warning of an attack had been received. “Suddenly, he fled and people began running after him”. Large police forces are now canvassing the nearby streets in search of the perpetrator, Xinhua reported. I heard screaming and saw a man shooting. More than half were said by Israel to be attackers.

“If I were there when it happened I would have been dead”, she told AFP, recounting how she hid in her salon’s storage room with a few customers, clutching a pair of scissors and waiting for the shooting to end. He said that inside the bar, “friends were celebrating a birthday and a man opened fire at them from the outside”.

Palestinian officials, meanwhile, have claimed Israeli authorities have repeatedly gone too far, saying that Israeli forces killed more than 80 Palestinians in the same period, a figure that includes protesters who died in clashes, as well as alleged attacks.

Late on Friday, gunmen in the Gaza Strip fired two rockets at Israel causing no injuries or damage, the Israeli military said.

Israel has seen a wave of Palestinian street attacks since October, fueled in part by Muslim anger over stepped-up Jewish visits to Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque complex, also sacred to Jews, as well as the lack of any progress toward peace with Israel.