In a suspected act of terrorism, a supermarket employee in the central Israeli town of Yavne was stabbed and critically wounded on Wednesday. The suspect, later named as Ismail Ibrahim Abu Aram, 19, from the Hebron-adjacent village of Yatta, was arrested after attempting to flee the scene. The wounded man, in his early 40s, was evacuated by ambulance to Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot. Another supermarket employee who was present during the attack suffered shock. According to one eyewitness, shortly before the attack, the terrorist asked him if he was an employee of the Shufersal market. "I told him I wasn't, and he kept walking," the witness said. "After 10 minutes I heard screams from the direction of the cash registers. The entire supermarket started going crazy, they thought it was a terrorist attack, everyone was on edge. We all began coughing because he [the suspect] was sprayed with pepper spray. "The wounded person was evacuated quickly in an ambulance. The cashiers were screaming, the workers are shaking in fear and Magen David Adom [medics] are treating them," he said.
Civilians at the scene apprehended Abu Aram until police units arrived a few minutes later.
The police said in a statement that according to initial inquiries, the attack was suspected to be "nationalistically motivated."
