Tel Aviv: Shlomo Alperin had planned to attend a religious school on Wednesday but was instead attending a funeral, which is still in shock as Tel Aviv has been hit by the most violent attack in years.
“I want to go to the funeral. I feel the need for closeness,” said Alperin, after five people were shot Tuesday in the streets of Beni Brak.
From his flat, the 23-year-old ultra-Orthodox man heard repeated gunshots by Ukrainian construction workers, often saw his neighbor’s body crushed in a car, and killed two people in a cafe.
Hours later, grieving 25-year-old Michaela Ursulan was in her pajamas on Wednesday as she mourned her friend, one of the two Ukrainian victims.
“Every day we talked,” Ursulan recalled looking at pictures of his friend on a recent fishing trip, as if a candle were flickering in his kitchen.
Ursulan said both she and her friend moved from Chernivtsi in western Ukraine to Israel for work, and bonded while away from home.
“We don’t have our parents here, everyone is abroad,” she said.
A Palestinian gunman armed with an M-16 shot and killed two Ukrainian civilians, as well as two ultra-Orthodox Jewish men and an Arab Christian police officer, in northern Israel late Tuesday, police said.
The two Ukrainians have not been named, but they were manual laborers, said witness Lior Rahimi, pointing to a corner shop and cafe.
Describing him as a friendly and helpful person, the 38-year-old said, “He used to sit here for hours every day after work.”
Police have identified the perpetrator as 27-year-old Diya Armashah, a Palestinian from the West Bank village of Yabad. The police killed him on the spot.
The slain Israelis, 36-year-old Yaakov Shalom and 29-year-old Avishai Yehezel, both ultra-Orthodox residents of Bnei Brak, were buried on Wednesday. The funeral of 32-year-old Amir Khure, an Arab Christian policeman from Nof Hagil, was to take place on Thursday. “It’s painful. It’s your neighbors,” said Alperin. “My neighbor lost his life for nothing.”
The Bnei Brak shooting rampage was the third fatal attack in the Jewish state in the past week.
On Sunday, two Arab citizens of Israel shot and killed two police officers in the northern city of Hadera, in an attack claimed by Daesh.
A few days earlier, an Israeli Arab Bedouin citizen who had previously tried to join Daesh killed four people by stabbing and crushing his vehicle in the southern city of Beersheba.
“Real fear!” said leader Levi, 37, an artist.
“I’m going to avoid places where there are a lot of people,” she said in Ramat Gan, a town next to Bnei Brak, when she didn’t tell her younger sons “so they’re not afraid.”
Ronnie Malle, 65, saw the attacker in security camera footage as he followed the stairs to the office.
“There was a door between him and me,” she said. “I usually leave the door open,” he said. “I don’t know why I closed the door.”
“I don’t know how I’m alive,” he said, adding that he could not sleep, as the shocking incident was replaying in his mind.