Israel violence: Israeli stabs Jewish man 'mistaken for Arab' at Ikea in Kiryat Ata

An Israeli Jewish man has stabbed another Jew who he reportedly mistook for an Arab in what appears to be a botched revenge attack at an Ikea store in Kiryat Ata, in the Haifa district.

Police said both the attacker and the victim are Jews from Kiryat Ata and were investigating whether the stabber thought the man was an Arab, due to his "Middle Eastern appearance", according to Haaretz.

The victim, a 22-year-old, was injured in his upper torso and was treated by paramedics who rushed at the scene. He is in a moderate condition. The attacker was apprehended by Israeli police.

The attack is just the latest in a series of of incidents in the occupied East Jerusalem and Israel, and is symptomatic of rising tensions in the troubled region. In a "morning of terror" on Tuesday 13 October, three Israeli men were killed by Palestinians in four different assaults.

Two Palestinian men armed with knives and gun killed at least two people and wounded four a bus in Jerusalem. One of the assailants was killed, according to an ambulance service spokesman, and the other captured by police. A few minutes later, another Palestinian rammed his car into a bus stop in the centre of Jerusalem before getting out and knifing people on Jerusalem's Machei Israeli street. One pedestrian has been killed and six were wounded. The attacker was "neutralised" according to Israeli police.

In the eastern city of Ra'anana, a 22-year-old Palestinian from East Jerusalem stabbed one person at a bus station before being subdued by passers-by. The victim, a 32-year-old Israeli, was lightly wounded in the attack. In the second attack in the city, a Jewish woman was wounded after being stabbed by an attacker, who was then arrested by police.

Seven Israelis and 27 Palestinians including nine attackers, have died amid dozens of stabbing attacks targeting Jews in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The violence started in part out of Muslim anger over increasing Jewish visits to al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, Islam's third holiest site.

The main Palestinian factions, including Fatah movement in the occupied West Bank and Islamist Gaza-ruler Hamas, have declared a Day of Rage on 13 October across the occupied Palestinian territories accusing Israel of "escalating its crimes against our people" and carrying out "summary executions".

On 11 October, a pregnant Palestinian woman and her three-year-old daughter were killed east of Gaza City. The mother and daughter died after their house collapsed following an Israeli air strike on an alleged Hamas military training camp near their home. Three other people were also injured in the attack. Palestinian rescue services are continuing to search through the rubble for survivors.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said the air strikes were launched in response to a rocket fired from Gaza. It said the rocket was intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome defence system and it had then conducted air strikes on two Hamas weapon-manufacturing facilities in Gaza.