Israeli mob kills bystander after bus station attack

Eritrean man was first shot by security guard before being kicked by angry crowd.

An Israeli border guard checks the ID of a Palestinian woman at a newly erected checkpoint in East Jerusalem on October 19, 2015. Ahmad Gharabli AFP

JERUSALEM // An Eritrean migrant shot by a security guard and kicked by an angry Israeli crowd that mistook him for a gunman has died from his injuries.

The killing of Eritrean agricultural worker, Habtom Zarhum, 29, described by some newspapers as a lynching, was captured on amateur video on Sunday. He was attacked after a shooting by a Palestinain at a bus station in the southern city of Beersheba.

Zarhum was the latest victim in almost three weeks of violence that has also killed 41 Palestinians, including assailants and demonstrators at anti-Israeli occupation protests and eight Israelis.

It was set off in part by Palestinians’ anger over what they see as increased Jewish encroachment on Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque complex.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, due to hold separate meetings this week with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, said on Monday it was vital they clarify the status around the compound, also revered by Jews.

Israel summoned French ambassador Patrick Maisonnave on Monday over his country’s proposal to send international observers to the compound.

In response to the worst violence since an uprising a decade ago, Israel has poured hundreds of troops into its cities and set up roadblocks in Palestinian neighbourhoods of occupied East Jerusalem. Palestinians view the moves as collective punishment.

In the most recent incident, an attacker who police said was a Bedouin citizen of Israel entered the heavily guarded station armed with a pistol on Sunday and shot dead a soldier before snatching his rifle and opening fire on the crowd, wounding nine people.

Police shot the assailant dead, and initially reported there had been a second gunman. On Monday, they said there had been no other attacker and an investigation had been opened into the Eritrean man’s death.

Amateur video showed a security guard shooting the Eritrean. Lying on the ground bleeding, and with armed paramilitary police surrounding him in an apparent effort to protect him, he was kicked in the head several times by people who slipped through the loose cordon.

Nitza Neuman-Heiman, Deputy Director General of Soroka Medical Center, told Army Radio the Eritrean died of gunshot wounds and the injuries he sustained from the kicks.

Sagi Malachi, his employer, described Zarhum as a quiet, modest man who had travelled to Beersheba to renew his visa. “The country is in a state of chaos. Civilians are confused, people are taking the law into their own hands,” Mr Malachi said on the radio.

Israeli media describing him as an asylum seeker, like many Eritreans who have come to Israel. The police promised an investigation, saying they “considered this incident as extremely serious”.

Sari Bashi, the Israel/Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, called the death a “tragic but foreseeable outgrowth of a climate in which some Israeli politicians encourage citizens to take the law into their own hands”.

Many have accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government of inflaming the tensions with the severity of their crackdown on Palestinian communities and encouraging Israeli civilians with gun licences to go about armed.

On Monday, he responded to Zarhum’s death by warning against against vigilantism. “We’ve a country of law. No one will take the law into his own hands,” he told his party.

He went on to argue that online extremism was influencing attackers.

“What we see here is the merging of extremist Islam and the internet. It’s Osama bin Laden meets Mark Zuckerberg,” he said, referring to the Facebook chief.

In Gaza, Fathy Hamad, a Hamas leader, praised Palestinians who carried out attacks. “This intifada [uprising] will not stop, this Jihad will not stop,” he said at a public ceremony.

*Agencies