The 911 caller in Tel Aviv sounded panicked, his voice loud and urgent.
“She was stabbed in the head!”
Go to Hamasger Street, the caller shouted.
A man stabbed nine people, including the driver of a bus and passengers on Wednesday, in what police are calling a terror attack.
The girl, was she conscious? the 911 operator asked.
“Yes, yes, she is crying, she is conscious,” the caller answered.
The attacker was a 23-year-old Palestinian from the West Bank city of Tulkarem, authorities said. Police shot him in the leg after he got off the bus. He was arrested and is being questioned, they said.
Witnesses and police say that when the attacker boarded the bus and stabbed the driver and a few passengers, the driver tried to fight back by spraying the assailant with pepper spray, veering the bus, pumping the brakes and opening the doors. Some passengers were able to get out and get away. The attacker ran after them and stabbed a few people on his way out of the bus.
Prison guards who were in their car behind the bus got out of their vehicle and chased the assailant, witnesses and police said. The attacker was shot in the leg and apprehended.
Four victims were seriously wounded, according to emergency responders. Five people were either lightly or moderately injured, emergency services said. Several other passengers were treated for shock.
A woman who was injured also called 911. “My body is covered with blood,” she said.
Hamas spokesman Izzat al-Risheq, who is based in Qatar, praised the attack, according to the Times of Israel and Haaretz.
“The heroic stabbing incident against the Zionist in Tel Aviv is a daring and heroic act,” he reportedly said. “It comes as a natural response to the terrorist occupation crimes against our people.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired back, casting a net of blame around Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which together form a unity government.
“The terrorist attack in Tel Aviv is the direct result of the poisonous incitement being disseminated by the Palestinian Authority against the Jews and their state. This same terrorism is trying to attack us in Paris, Brussels and everywhere.”
There has been a string of attacks against Israeli residents in recent months.
Here is a look at a few of them:
A Palestinian man threw acid on an Israeli family near a Jerusalem checkpoint in December, Israeli authorities said.
A teenage Palestinian girl with a knife stabbed an Israeli man in the West Bank, Israeli police said.
Two Palestinian cousins stormed a Jerusalem synagogue in mid-November with a gun and butcher’s knives, killing five. They were shot dead by police.
Days later, Israeli authorities said they foiled a plot by Palestinians to assassinate Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
More than a week earlier, attackers stabbed one Israeli soldier to death in Tel Aviv and three more Israelis near a West Bank settlement, the IDF said. One of the West Bank victims also died.
In early November, a Palestinian man driving a van plowed into pedestrians at a train stop in eastern Jerusalem, killing two. Another 12 people were injured. The man died in police gunfire after also attacking people with a metal bar, police said.
In October, a Palestinian man rammed his car into commuters waiting at a light rail stop in Jerusalem, killing a baby and wounding several other people, Israeli police said. The driver of the vehicle was shot as he tried to flee and later died.
Also in October, according to a Palestinian state news report, an Israeli man killed a 5-year-old Palestinian girl when he ran her down in a car as she walked home from kindergarten. The attack reportedly also injured a second 5-year-old girl.