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Four wounded in Tel Aviv stabbing attack by tourist: What we know

Police says that the person who attacked four people with a knife in Tel Aviv is a Moroccan national who entered Israel with a US residency permit.

Members of Israeli security forces stand guard at the site of a stabbing attack in Tel Aviv on January 21, 2025. Three people were wounded in a stabbing attack on January 21 in Tel Aviv, including one seriously, and the attacker was killed, Israeli emergency service Magen David Adom said. (Photo by Jack GUEZ / AFP) (Photo by JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images)
Members of Israeli security forces stand guard at the site of a stabbing attack in Tel Aviv on January 21, 2025. — JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images

Four people were stabbed Tuesday evening in the center of Tel Aviv by a Moroccan national who held an American permanent residency permit. 

Ynet reported that the attacker, identified as Abdelaziz Kaddi, a 29-year-old living in Brooklyn, entered Israel on a tourist visa on Jan. 18. His US residency card was found at the scene of the attack. The report added that he was originally from the town of Zagora in Morocco. His US residency permit was a DV1, which means he received it through the American residency lottery program. 

Last April, Kaddi posted on Facebook that half a million people in Gaza were about to die of starvation.

Police said that Kaddi first stabbed three people on the busy Nahalat Binyamin Street and then continued to nearby Gruzenberg Street, where he stabbed a fourth person. A female police officer who was not on duty shot and killed the assailant.

Interior Minister Moshe Arbel said that officers at Immigration Authority at the Ben Gurion Airport wanted to prevent him from entering Israel and transferred him to Shin Bet officers at the airport for questioning, but the Shin Bet officers decided to allow him to enter the country. Arbel called on the Shin Bet "to learn the lesson from that incident."

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