(JNi.media) Six people were stabbed during a gay pride parade held on Thursday in Jerusalem. Large police forces converged on Keren Hayesod Street, in the affluent neighborhood of Rehavia, in downtown Jerusalem, the marchers were ordered to return to Independence Park, where the parade had begun.
“The wounded were covered in blood with blue marks on their faces,” an eyewitness told NRG.
The stabber has been identified as Yishai Schlissel, 40, an ultra-Orthodox man who had stabbed three marchers at the gay pride parade in Jerusalem 10 years ago. Schlissel served 10 years in prison for the stabbing and was released only three weeks ago.
Schlissel was captured immediately after stabbing the six marchers at the intersection of Keren Hayesod and George Washington Streets.
One of the victimes, a woman, is in critical condition, and the doctors at the Shaare Zedek Medical Center are fighting for her life. Another victim’s condition is defined as serious, one is stable and three others light.
The head of the right-wing Le’hava organization Benzi Gofstiin, who organized by a protest picket line in Jerusalem’s Paris Square against the gay pride parade, told Israel radio that he condemned the stabbing.
“We are against such acts against Jews,” said Gofstiin. However, he stressed that a “parade of abomination,” as he put it, should not be permitted in Jerusalem, just as Jews are not permitted to pray on the Temple Mount.
A large crowd of ultra-Orthodox Jews has congregated in Jerusalem’s Shabbat Square for an “assembly of prayer and crying” against the gay pride parade.