Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas denounced a fatal axe assault in central Israel on Thursday, while Hamas defended the incident as retaliation for Israel’s recent violations of Palestinian sanctuaries.

“The death of Palestinian and Israeli civilians simply exacerbates the situation,” Abbas was reported as saying by the official Palestinian news agency (WAFA).The event, Abbas said, will be exploited “to carry out assaults and retaliation against our Palestinian people.”

Two Palestinians armed with axes assaulted passers-by in Elad, a Jewish ultra-Orthodox community east of Tel Aviv, on Thursday night, killing at least three people and wounded four others before leaving the scene, according to Israeli officials.

The murders have been labelled terrorists by Israel, which has begun a manhunt for them. The incident was not claimed by any organisation. Hamas and other Palestinian organisations, on the other hand, praised the attack, saying in separate statements that it was “a reasonable response to the repeated Israeli crimes at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

Following the axe assault, Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, played down Israeli threats to target Hamas officials, saying that “Al-Aqsa is a red line that is not subject to any concessions.”

Ismail Haniyeh, the movement’s politburo chief, said in a press release on Thursday that Israeli threats to assassinate Palestinian leaders “will not deter us from defending our land and our sanctity,” and that “the Palestinians will not keep silent when the sanctities, primarily the Al-Aqsa Mosque, are targeted.”

The Elad attack occurred during Israel’s 74th Independence Day celebrations, as well as rising Israeli-Palestinian tensions sparked by a recent spate of deadly Palestinian attacks on Israelis, fatal Israeli raids in the West Bank, and clashes between Palestinian worshipers and Israeli police at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

According to Israeli media, 18 Israelis have been slain in more than five shooting and stabbing assaults in northern, central, and southern Israel since March, the most lethal attacks in seven years.

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