Footage of the brawl shows participants running toward a church armed with weapons and tear gas spray.District Commander, Major General Peretz Amar arrived at the scene and ordered reinforcements to deal with the situation.
“We received a report of a fight between several men,” said Magen David Adom paramedic Simcha Simanduyev and senior medic Shoham Levy. “We arrived with a large force and saw chaos. We coordinated with police forces and began treating the injured,” but two of those injured “were critical, and we had to pronounce them dead at the scene.”
Levy said that “two more people were in very serious condition, while two others were fully conscious but sustained moderate injuries. We provided medical treatment and evacuated them in MDA intensive care units to the hospital. Other teams treated several more conscious individuals with minor injuries on-site.”
Entire streets were sealed off
Itamar Avneri, a city council member from the “Purple City” movement and the “We are All the City” faction, commented, “In recent months, we’ve seen how the government’s longstanding neglect of the Eritrean population, along with the municipality’s disregard for south Tel Aviv, has created a divided city.
Long-time residents of the southern neighborhoods, along with refugees and asylum seekers, are being left to fend for themselves.
“Beyond the immediate police response, there’s a need for reform in national and municipal welfare policies to prevent these types of incidents from recurring.
Everyone deserves to live in safety and peace, but the authorities remain silent, ignoring repeated warnings from the Eritrean community about the volatile situation, and this is the result.”
The Eritrean church in Tel Aviv issued a statement saying that “several worshipers were injured by stabbings and tear gas as they left the church. We contacted the police to request intervention.
We emphasize that the church opposes violence and is not involved in the conflict between supporters and opponents of the Eritrean regime. We urgently request police assistance in combating violence. Previous appeals to the police have been ineffective.”
