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Police searching for the assailant in Kiryat Gat, November 21, 2015. Credit: Eliyahu Hershkovitz
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The four victims, two men and a woman and a 13-year-old girl, suffered moderate-to-serious wounds; mob attacks Bedouin man mistaken for terrorist.

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- A suspected Palestinian stabbed and wounded four Israelis, including a 13-year-old girl, in the southern Israeli city of Kiryat Gat on Saturday evening before fleeing the scene, Israeli police said.

Israeli police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld said that an Israeli man was seriously injured and two women and a 13-year-old girl moderately injured in what he described as a "confirmed terrorist attack."

Shortly afterward, Israeli police said that a mob of Israeli civilians violently beat and bound the hands of a Palestinian Bedouin man they incorrectly believed was the attacker.

The four Israelis and the Bedouin were evacuated to Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon.

Rosenfeld said that special police units were searching Kiryat Gat for the suspected attacker amid "heightened security."

Israeli news site Ynet reported that "hundreds" of Israeli police officers were taking part in the search and were using helicopters.

Roadblocks had also been placed at roads leading into Kiryat Gat, effectively putting the city under "lockdown," Ynet reported.

On Thursday, four Israelis and one Palestinian were killed in two separate attacks in Tel Aviv and the illegal settlement bloc of Gush Etzion in the southern West Bank. The Palestinian attackers were afterward arrested.

The attacks have accompanied a wave of popular unrest that has swept the the occupied Palestinian territory since the beginning of October.

While Israelis have sought to blame it on religious incitement, Palestinians have pointed to the nearly 50-year military occupation of the Palestinian territory, no prospect of a political solution, and a deep sense of frustration and despair.

At least 86 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces during the period -- many shot dead under circumstances in which rights groups said that Israeli forces used unnecessary force -- while at least 16 Israelis have been killed in the same period.
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by Almog Ben Zikri for Haaretz

Four people were wounded in a suspected stabbing attack in the southern city of Kiryat Gat.

The incident took place near the entrance to the stadium on the corner of David Hamaelch street and Malchei Israel street. Police blocked roads in the city as it searched for the assailant. 

An eye witness said the knife-wielding attacker, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, ran toward the victims shouting "allahu akbar" (God is the greatest).

After treating the victims on scene, they were taken by Magen David Adom ambulance service to Barzilai Medical Center, Ashkelon for further treatment. The four victims, a man and two women in their 40s and 50s and a 13-year-old girl, were said to have suffered moderate-to-serious wounds.

Police said that a Bedouin man in his 40s from the Segev Shalom, a town southeast of Be'er Sheva, was beaten by a mob in a construction site near the location of the stabbings after they mistook him for the attacker. He was taken to Barzilai hospital with light wounds for further treatment.

Five Israelis were killed on Thursday in two unrelated attacks. On Thursday afternoon, three people were killed and five others were wounded in a shooting and car-ramming attack in Gush Etzion, a settlement bloc in the West Bank. Earlier that day, two people were killed in a stabbing attack in Tel Aviv. The assailants in both incidents were detained.