Soldier stabbed in Tel Aviv terror attack dies

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The Israeli soldier stabbed by a Palestinian assailant near a Tel Aviv train station has died.

Almog Shiloni, 20, died Monday evening at the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer hours after he was brought in with multiple stab wounds to his chest and heart.

His alleged assailant, identified as Nur al-Din Abu Hashyaa, 18, from the West Bank city of Nablus, is in police custody. He had entered Israel illegally, according to Israel Police.

The suspect tried to take the soldier’s weapon after stabbing him multiple times with a knife, police said. Hashyaa was apprehended in an apartment building near the attack site.

Police have confirmed that the attack was nationalistically motivated.

Dan Shapiro, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, condemned the attack.

“There is no justification for violence and terror,” he said.

Shiloni was the second Jewish Israeli to be killed in a terror attack on Monday.

Dalia Lemkos, from the West Bank settlement of Tekoa, was killed early Monday evening and two others were injured at the Alon Shvut junction in Gush Etzion, where the three Israelis were waiting for rides. Lemkos, who was in her mid-20s, reportedly also was stabbed in a terror attack in 2006.

Her alleged assailant, identified as Maher Hamdi al-Hashalmoun of Hebron, is affiliated with Islamic Jihad and spent more than four years in prison in Israel for throwing firebombs. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.

Hashalmoun is being treated in a Jerusalem hospital.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin in a statement expressed his sympathy to the victims’ families.

“These are difficult days,” he said. “They demand of us unity and strength in the face of the perpetrators of terror, who proved today with their blood-soaked hands that the reality in Jerusalem is as it is in Tel Aviv, and the reality in Tel Aviv is as it is in Gush Etzion.”