JERUSALEM, Feb. 5 (Xinhua) -- Israeli officials identified Monday the knifeman who killed an Israeli in the West Bank earlier Monday as a Palestinian citizen of Israel and a resident of Tel Aviv.
Abd Al Karim Assi, 19, fled the scene immediately after stabbing to death an Israeli civilian settler near the West Bank settlement of Ariel.
Large Israeli forces were still on a manhunt searching for him on Monday night.
Israeli security officials said Assi's mother lives in Haifa, a city in northern Israel, and his father lives in the West Bank city of Nablus. Assi himself lived in Jaffa, part of the municipality of Tel Aviv, Israel's financial capital.
According to Hadashot TV news, Assi received social help and therapy at a home in Tel Aviv for at-risk youth. He left the home a few months ago and had lived with his father in Nablus since then.
Early on Monday afternoon, Assi arrived at a bus station outside Ariel and attacked a bypasser with two knives, inflicting him with fatal wounds, according to a police statement.
The victim, identified as Itamar Ben-Gal, 29, a father of four from the nearby settlement of Har Bracha, was rushed to a hospital in Petah Tikva in central Israel, where he succumbed to his wounds, said a spokesperson for the hospital.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to bring the perpetrator of the attack to justice. "IDF (Israel Defense Forces) and the Shin Bet forces are currently searching for the perpetrator," Netanyahu said at the start of the Likud faction meeting.
"We will bring him to justice, as we always do," said the prime minister. "I put my trust in the security forces who do the hardest work against these disgraceful attacks," he added.
The incident came a day after the cabinet voted to legalize a 16-year-old unauthorized Israeli outpost in the West Bank, which was built without formal Israeli permits on a privately-owned Palestinian land.
The Prime Minister's Office said in a statement on Sunday that the cabinet decided to retroactively grant the outpost with a permit in response to the killing of a resident of the outpost, Rabbi Raziel Shevah, who was shot to death by a Palestinian attacker in January.
The outpost, called Havat Gilad, is located north of Ariel.
The incident was the latest in a fresh wave of violence in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Israel, sparked by U.S. President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on December 6.
