2 people are stabbed at a hotel outside Jerusalem. Israeli police say it's a militant attack

JERUSALEM — A Palestinian employee stabbed two guests at a hotel outside of Jerusalem on Friday in what Israeli police described as a militant attack, the second in the area this week.

According to police, the employee came out of the kitchen at a hotel in the bucolic Kibbutz Tzuba and stabbed two guests in the dining room.

An off-duty police officer and the hotel’s dining manager tackled the attacker until more officers arrived and arrested him.

Israeli paramedics said they evacuated two men, aged approximately 50 and 25, to a nearby hospital. They said both had been stabbed in their torsos, the older man left in critical condition.

Israeli police said the attacker was from the Shuafat area in east Jerusalem, and that three other suspects were also arrested on suspicion they were involved in the attack. Hamas praised the attack but did not claim responsibility for it.

Two Palestinians from the occupied West Bank opened fire at a bus stop at Jerusalem earlier this week, killing six people. Hamas claimed that attack.

The war in the Gaza Strip, triggered by Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack into Israel, has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and sparked a surge of violence in Israel and the occupied West Bank.