Israeli security forces stand guard in front of a cordoned-off area at the site of a reported stabbing attack at a shopping center in Beit Kama in southern Israel on March 14, 2024. (Credit: Menahem Kahana/AFP)
Medics said on Thursday that a man in his 50s was "seriously injured" in a stabbing attack in central Israel, and police said the assailant was "neutralized."
The Magen David Adom emergency service said the attack occurred outside Beit Kama kibbutz roughly 55 kilometers southwest of Jerusalem.
"We arrived at the scene in large numbers, we saw a great commotion, and next to one of the stores a man in his 50s was lying unconscious and suffering from stab wounds to his body," Kalman Ginzburg, a senior paramedic with MDA, said in a statement.
"We immediately put him on mobile ICU and took him to hospital in critical condition while performing resuscitation."
The victim was being transported to a hospital in Beersheba, in southern Israel, MDA said.
The attack comes one day after police said two Israeli security personnel were wounded in a stabbing carried out by a 15-year-old Palestinian boy on a bicycle.
That attack occurred at the Tunnels checkpoint south of Jerusalem, and police later pronounced the assailant dead.
Israel is on edge amid its ongoing war against Hamas militants in Gaza, now in its sixth month.
The war was triggered by Hamas's unprecedented Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Israel's retaliatory campaign to destroy Hamas has killed 31,341 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in Gaza.
Mediators had been hoping for a new truce in the war ahead of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan which began on Monday, but so far talks have not yielded a breakthrough.
The Magen David Adom emergency service said the attack occurred outside Beit Kama kibbutz roughly 55 kilometers southwest of Jerusalem.
"We arrived at the scene in large...