JERUSALEM (KRON/AP) – Six people were stabbed during an attack at Jerusalem’s annual gay pride parade Thursday evening and Israeli police said the alleged attacker had carried out a similar assault before.
The suspect is described as an Ultra-Orthodox Jewish man, who had served time for a stabbing attack at a gay pride parade in 2005 police spokeswoman Luba Samri said.
Investigators say Yishai Schlissel had recently been released from prison after serving time for that assault.
Eli Bin of Israel’s emergency service said six young people were wounded in Thursday’s attack, two of them seriously.
Witnesses told Channel 2 TV that the man lunged toward parade marchers and stabbed multiple people before Israeli police jumped on him and made an arrest. Witnesses reported hearing screaming and then seeing several victims on the ground.
“People ran in every direction to take cover. Where I was standing there were three people on the ground bleeding. There was immense panic and shock,” one witness said.
Media reported that in the attack a decade ago, Schlissel hid in a nearby supermarket and jumped out, stabbing marchers as they passed during a gay pride parade in Jerusalem. Several people were injured.
Jerusalem police spokesman Asi Ahroni said there was a “massive presence” of police securing the parade but “unfortunately the man managed to pull out a knife and attack.”
The parade continued after the wounded were taken to a hospital, with protesters chanting “end the violence.”
Jerusalem’s annual parade is smaller and more restrained than the annual gay pride march in Tel Aviv, which was attended by some 100,000 people last month.
Tel Aviv has emerged as one of the world’s most gay-friendly travel destinations recently, in sharp contrast to most of the rest of the Middle East, where people who are gay are persecuted or even killed.
Gays serve openly in Israel’s military and parliament, and many popular artists and entertainers are gay, but people who are gay still face hostility among many religious Jews.