police standing around covered body outside old city walls

Hamas, Israelis reject Islamic State claims over Jerusalem attack

Tel Aviv: Palestinian factions and the Israeli military have both rejected a claim by Islamic State that three Palestinian men who carried out a fatal shooting and stabbing attack in Jerusalem were members of the militant group.

The attack with guns and knives near Jerusalem’s Old City on Friday killed a border policewoman and wounded three other people. It was the first attack in Israel or the Israeli-occupied West Bank claimed by Islamic State.

Hours after the attack, the group announced that “soldiers of the caliphate” had launched the “blessed operation … on a gathering of Jews” and said it would attack again.

Hamas said one of the attackers belonged to the Islamist  Hamas movement and two others to the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, both domestic Palestinian groups.

Read the full article by Joshua Mitnick at The Sydney Morning Herald.