Man stabs six people at Jerusalem gay pride parade

An ultra-Orthodox Jewish man lunged into a group of revelers at Jerusalem's annual gay pride parade and stabbed six people Thursday evening as they marched in the holy city, Israeli police and witnesses said.

The man, Yishai Schlissel, was recently been released from prison after serving a sentence for stabbing several people at a gay pride parade in 2005, police spokeswoman Luba Samri said.

She said Schlissel was arrested. Eli Bin of Israel's emergency service said six young people were wounded in the attack, two of them seriously.

Witnesses told Channel 2 TV that a man rushed the marchers and stabbed multiple people before Israeli police jumped on him and arrested him.

Yishai Avior, who was at the parade, told the station that he heard screaming. "People ran in every direction to take cover. Where I was standing, there were three people on the ground bleeding. There was immense panic and shock," he said.

Schlissel carried out a similar attack, wounding several people at a gay pride parade in Jerusalem a decade ago. Media reported that he waited in a nearby supermarket and jumped out to attack the march when it passed.

Jerusalem police spokesman Asi Ahroni said that there was a "massive presence" of police securing the parade but that "unfortunately, the man managed to pull out a knife and attack."

The parade continued after the wounded were taken to a hospital, with protesters chanting "end the violence."

Jerusalem's annual parade is smaller and more restrained than the annual gay pride march in Tel Aviv, which was attended by some 100,000 revelers last month. Tel Aviv has emerged as one of the world's gay-friendliest travel destinations, in sharp contrast to most of the rest of the Middle East, where gay and lesbians are persecuted or even killed.

Gays serve openly in Israel's military and parliament, and many popular artists and entertainers are gay, but gay men and lesbians still face hostility among religious Jews.

The Associated Press