Five dead in terror attacks in West Bank, Tel Aviv

The American Jew killed in the attack was identified as Ezra Schwartz of Sharon, Mass., who was in Israel for his gap year between high school and college.

Sydney Perry, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven, said she lived on the same block of McKinley Avenue with Ezra Schwartz’s grandparents, Dr. Mark and Heni Schwartz and his father, Ari Schwartz.

According to the school, Rabbi Yaakov Don was a passenger with Schwartz and also killed in the attack.

An American yeshiva student was among three people killed in the West Bank when an attacker fired shots from a vehicle and then rammed pedestrians with the auto, the Israel Defense Forces said.

A Brookline school on Thursday identified a recent graduate visiting Israel as among three people killed in an attack in the West Bank.

“Behind these terrorist attacks stands radical Islam, which seeks to destroy us, the same radical Islam that struck in Paris and threatens all of Europe.” he said.

In the Gaza Strip, hundreds of Palestinians joined a rally that was held to back the violent confrontations between Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

On July 31, the Dawabsha family home in the West Bank village of Duma was firebombed, allegedly by Jewish terrorists, killing 18-month-old Ali Saad Dawabsha. The perpetrators of the attack have not been apprehended.

Schwartz was delivering food to IDF soldiers when the van he was riding in was shot at by a Palestinian man armed with a machine gun.

The building houses shops and offices and had been cordoned off by police after the attack. Six others were injured. A Palestinian and one Israeli were also killed; the gunman was arrested.

The building where the attack occurred, known as the Panorama building in southern Tel Aviv, hosts a variety of shops and offices.

Israel’s military said the Hamas militant group, on Twitter, praised the attack.

The first victim stumbled wounded into the synagogue, alerting other worshippers who blocked the attacker’s access. The rejoining of Hamas leaders at his killing is repugnant and a reminder that their sole interest is to incite hatred and violence towards Jews. During the call, Netanyahu said that terrorism was a “global problem requiring a global solution”.

Analysts said it was a concerning new trend as the perpetrator had a permit to work in Israel, was married with five children and had no previous criminal record.