TEL AVIV, Israel—For all its years of strife, Israel has rarely seen anything quite like this: an armed, wanted Arab killer on the loose, spreading fear across the land.
Even the most stoic are keeping their children home from school following the deadly daytime shooting at a popular bar on a busy Tel Aviv street that has become among the most unsettling attacks in a three-month wave of violence.
Israelis are used to quickly resuming their daily routines following attacks because assailants are typically captured or killed. But the frantic search for this gunman, whose attack on Friday afternoon was caught on security cameras, has sent jitters across this seaside city.
The unusual escape of the accused gunman, Nashat Milhem, an Arab from northern Israel who is considered to be armed and dangerous, is one of many elements of a case that has left Israelis on edge.
“Everything about this is characterized by uncertainty,” said Yossi Melman, a prominent security analyst, adding that the level of planning and sophistication were closer in style to those of Islamic State attackers in Brussels, Paris and California.
“I’m not familiar with an event like this, with an unclear nature that has lasted this long,” he said.
The shooting on Tel Aviv’s busy Dizengoff Street, which killed two Israeli men and wounded six other people, was recorded on security cameras at a health food store next door.
In the footage, a man with short dark hair, glasses and a black bag over his shoulder is seen scooping up nuts from the shop’s bulk food section, putting them in a plastic bag, then emptying them back. He then walks to the store entrance, places his backpack on a shopping cart and takes a gun out of it before stepping outside and opening fire into the bar. He then runs away.
