Eritrea Condemns Murder of Refugee in Israel, Demands Arrest of Attackers

The incident seemed to capture the current climate of ratcheted up tensions among Israelis after weeks of seemingly random lone-wolf attacks by Palestinians.

Eight Israelis have also died, and the attacks have put intense pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stem the violence. Soroka Hospital officials and Beersheba police both confirmed the death of at least one unnamed man during the attack.

Shuafat, following Sunday evening’s terrorist attack in the Central Bus Station in Beer Sheva.

The complex was evacuated following the attack as security forces searched the building as well as nearby areas for others who may been involved. The attacker, Bedouin-Israeli Mouhand al-Okbi, 21, entered the bus station on Sunday night armed with a handgun and a knife.

Footage circulated by the police showed the shattered glass windows of the mall and bloodstains on the floor under the rows of adjoining orange plastic chairs lining the terminal where passengers wait for buses.

The autopsy report is significant because if true it would mean the mob members who beat Zarhum, slammed a bench down on his defenseless body and savagely kicked him can’t be charged with murder or manslaughter.

During a month of violence, nine Israelis and the Eritrean have been killed. Koppu, the second strongest storm to hit the disaster- plagued Southeast Asian archipelago this year, had also forced over 60,000 people from their homes, authorities said.

“This is the only step that will deter them from carrying out the next terrorist attack”.

African asylum seekers who fled persecution to the relative safety of Israel are not recognized as refugees by Israel even though many are refugees according to worldwide law, and Israel regularly takes years to process asylum applications and residency applications filed by them.

While Israel can not deport Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers directly back to their countries of origin – because it would blatantly violate the principle of non-refoulement – most of the asylum seekers who live here do not receive work visas.

African migrants began pouring into Israel in 2007, with their numbers steadily growing until Israel built a fence along the Egyptian border in 2012. “It’s one more aspect of our security measures”.

Israeli police identified the assailant as 21-year-old Mohannad al-Okbi, an Arab citizen of Israel, from the Bedouin town of Hura in southern Israel. Netanyahu has said he seeks no change to the decades-old status quo in which Israel bans Jewish prayer at the al-Aqsa site in the walled Old City of East Jerusalem, captured along with the West Bank in a 1967 war.