New footage shows a suspect approaching an officer with a knife in Lod. Police now indicate the incident, initially probed as a possible terror attack, appears to be criminal in nature.
Police have reassessed Wednesday evening's stabbing incident in Lod, now indicating it appears to be a criminal incident rather than a terror attack, according to a new police statement. The shift follows hours of conflicting assessments throughout the day: earlier versions of this thread reported that police and Shin Bet had confirmed the attack as nationalist terror, after initial reports described the suspect — later identified as Sami Ahmad Ja'asus, a 28-year-old Israeli Arab resident of Lod with a prior weapons record — as an illegal infiltrator. New footage published Wednesday afternoon shows Ja'asus approaching a responding officer with a knife; Israel Hayom reported he first walked toward a local mosque, found it closed, and then advanced toward the officer, who shouted a warning, pushed him back, and neutralized him.
The earliest alert in this thread, published at Wed 10:20 Jerusalem, reported that a citizen had spotted a man with a knife near a school in Lod and alerted police. By version 4, police had identified the suspect as a local resident known for prior weapons offenses. Versions 9 and 12 had reported that police and Shin Bet assessed the incident as a terror attack, and version 10 confirmed it as a nationalist attack. Those assessments have now been walked back. The suspect's mental health background was noted as under examination in several thread versions.
The broader context, as The Zioneer reported in its earlier bulletin at Wed 13:56 Jerusalem, is that all lines of investigation were initially open. The scene — near a municipal complex and a school in Lod — drew a heavy police response.
It remains unclear what evidence led to the reclassification from a suspected nationalist attack to a criminal incident versus a terror attack. Police have not provided details on the suspect's motive or the specific findings that prompted the reassessment. The Shin Bet's continued involvement or withdrawal has not been specified.
12 developments
Source and signal
- Internal intake