State charges Palestinian with stabbing of IDF soldier at Tel Aviv train station

Nur al-Din Abu Hashaya allegedly entered Israel illegally on November 9 with the goal of killing a soldier to achieve the status of a "shahid" or martyr.

By YONAH JEREMY BOB
Scene of Tel Aviv stabbing (photo credit: AVSHALOM SASSONI)
Scene of Tel Aviv stabbing
(photo credit: AVSHALOM SASSONI)
The Tel Aviv District Attorney's Office on Monday filed an indictment with the Tel Aviv District Court against a Palestinian for the stabbing and alleged murder of air force Sgt. Almog Shiloni, 20, at midday on November 10 at Hagana train station in south Tel Aviv.
Nur al-Din Abu Hashaya, 18 and a Nablus resident, repeatedly stabbed Shiloni, of Modi'in, in the upper body with a large kitchen-knife and tried to steal his rifle before fleeing, said the indictment.
Hashaya allegedly entered Israel illegally on November 9 with the goal of killing a soldier to achieve the status of a "shahid" or martyr.
According to the indictment, when he arrived at the Tel Aviv train station, he saw that Shiloni was carrying an M-16 and decided that he would be his target.
After the stabbing, paramedics transported Shiloni to Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer where he ultimately passed away after efforts were made to save his life.
Shiloni was posthumously promoted to Staff-Sergeant and was buried at Jerusalem's Mount Herzl.
His death marked the second terror death that day in which, a 25-year-old woman named Dalia Lamkus was killed, also in a stabbing attack, near Gush Etzion.
Earlier, after the stabbing in Tel Aviv, the attacker made his way down Hagana Street and turned left on Levanda Street.
Along the way a series of civilians tried to stop him, but he managed to slip away.
By this time emergency dispatchers had fielded a number of calls from people reporting the stabbing, and members of the police’s Special Patrol Unit (Yasam) and the Border Police – both of which have officers stationed a few blocks away at Levinsky Park, near the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station – began rushing to the scene.
One of those officers, Sgt.- Maj. Ya’acov Shamiya, the commander of the Special Patrol Unit detachment at the Sharett station, said he arrived with Border Police officers David Cohen and Itai Shetrit.
Civilians pointed toward a building on Levanda Street, and after entering the officers saw blood stains on the first-floor stairwell and began racing up the stairs. Shamiya said. When they got to the top of the building they found the suspect, later named by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) as Noor Aladin Khaled Saed Abu Hashiya, 18, from Askar, near Nablus.
The suspect did not resist arrest, nor did he shout or profess anything, or have any weapons in his possession, Shamiya said.
No civilians tried to reach the suspect and attack him, and within moments of officers securing the scene, a large contingent of police from across the district cordoned off the area, Shetrit said.
The suspect was driven by ambulance to Ichilov Hospital at Sourasky Medical Center for treatment, as bystanders shouted obscenities and chanted “Death to terrorists,” with a few singing “Death to the Arabs” in the moments after the ambulance passed.
Tel Aviv police head Asst.- Ch. Bentzi Sau, who was at the scene along with Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, said officers were already interviewing witnesses and trying to get a clearer picture of what happened and whether there were any accomplices of the suspect loose in the city.
Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for both attacks. Police and security services went on high alert for copycat attacks across the country.
The “Knife Intifada” has begun, Palestinians tweeted and re-tweeted. The organization said the “battle for the Aksa Mosque and Jerusalem would continue and expand.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held late-night security consultations and decided to increase the number of security forces in the field and to advance the demolition of terrorists’ homes.
“The terrorism against us knows no borders. It is aimed at all parts of the country for a simple reason. The terrorists and those who incite to it want to get rid of us wherever we are. As far as they’re concerned, we don’t need to be in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem or anywhere else,” he said at a Likud faction meeting.
“I’ll promise you one thing: They won’t succeed,” Netanyahu said.
US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki condemned the terrorist attacks.
Ben Hartman, Tovah Lazaroff, Lahav Harkov and Khaled Abu Toameh contributed to this report.