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Two Dead In Tel Aviv Shooting Attack, Car Bomb Explodes At Afghan Restaurant In Violent Start To New Year

Just hours after Bavarian authorities closed the Hauptbahnhof and Pasing stations in Munich after Germany received a tip from French and American intelligence sources that a terrorist attack was planned for New Year’s Eve, two “incidents” have occurred in Kabul and Tel Aviv.

While it’s not clear if the two are related, at least one person is dead in a shooting at a Tel Aviv pub, and witnesses are reporting a large explosion at a restaurant in Kabul close to a district Reuters says contains many foreign embassies and government buildings. Both are being called "suspected terror attacks."

Reports indicate the shooter in Tel Aviv used an automatic rifle in the attack, firing 10 shots into a crowd. “At least seven were wounded, two critically, in the attack on Friday afternoon,” Haaretz reports, adding that “security forces and emergency teams rushed to the site, on the corner of Dizengoff and Gordon St., and are combing the area.”  A manhunt is underway for the suspect. Here's more from The Times of Israel:

Two people are dead and three are in serious condition in a shooting attack in Tel Aviv just before 3 p.m. Friday.

 

Witnesses say some 10 shots were fired in the attack, apparently in automatic bursts.

 

The shots were fired inside a bar at Dizengoff 122, near the city’s well-known Dizengoff Center Mall. The area is crowded on Friday afternoons.

Here are the visuals from the scene in Tel Aviv:

Meanwhile, in Kabul, police say a car bomb targeted a restaurant popular with Afghan officials and foreign diplomats. "[An] official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media, said the explosion appeared to have hit "Le Jardin", one of a small number of restaurants in Kabul still frequented by foreigners," Reuters says, adding that "the explosion came days after the Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide attack near Kabul airport that killed one person and wounded 33 others, the latest in a series of suicide attacks in the city."

Some sources say the attack in Israel may be an act of "nationalist terror," suggesting no immediate connection with ISIS and certainly not with the Taliban.

Even if the attacks aren't related, it says something about the state of society in the new year when terror attacks have become so commonplace that they accidentally happen at the same time in geographically distinct locations.

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