At least two people were killed on Thursday in a shooting in central Tel Aviv in the latest of a series of deadly attacks across Israel, officials said.
Two men around 30 were killed and three others were seriously wounded by gunfire at a restaurant, the Magen David Adom emergency services said.
Hundreds of members of the security forces were part of the hunt for the attacker, police said, as residents were urged to stay indoors.
“The shooting was in the centre of Tel Aviv on Thursday night, when you have hundreds and hundreds of people sitting out, hanging out when this shooting happened,” said Avi Marcus, chief paramedic at the United Hatzalah emergency services.
Thirteen people have been killed in four separate attacks in Israeli cities since March 22.
At the Tel Aviv incident, Mr Marcus said some of the casualties were still at the scene when he arrived.
“The scene was smashed up, lots of blood, lots of glass shattered around the place. [There were] lots of people not understanding what happened,” he told The National.
Stools and tables were scattered in a pile outside the restaurant after the shooting.
Tom Nides, the US ambassador to Israel, said he was “horrified to see another cowardly terror attack on innocent civilians”.
A shooting last week in Bnei Brak, an ultra-Orthodox city near Tel Aviv, left five civilians dead.
The assailants, who were shot dead in the three separate incidents, were identified as Arab-Israelis and one Palestinian from the West Bank.
During the last week of March, Israeli forces killed six Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
