Israeli soldier stabbed outside Tel Aviv train station in ‘confirmed terrorist attack’

Around 12:30 p.m. today, reports started coming in that a man had been stabbed outside the HaHagana train station in South Tel Aviv. (A dodgy area anyway, known for the occasional stabbing/mugging.)

But in the couple hours that followed, Israel Police revealed that they believed the attack to be politically motivated. Police identified the victim as a 20-year-old soldier from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and the stabber as a Palestinian man from Nablus who entered Israel illegally.

“Terrorist attack confirmed,” Tweeted police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld at 1:19 p.m. “>Witness photos from the scene of the stabbing, some of which are posted to crowd-reporting site Rotter.net, show the victim stripped of his uniform and lying in a pool of blood as first responders from Magen David Adom (Israel's version of the Red Cross) try to resuscitate him.

According to Magen David Adom, the soldier's pulse had stopped by the time ambulances arrived. But paramedics kept him alive, albeit in “critical condition,” and he's now undergoing surgery 15 minutes east at Sheba Hospital.