Israelis among wounded in US synagogue attack

Two Israelis were among the wounded in a weekend attack on a synagogue in California that killed one person and injured three others, an official said Sunday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the "atrocious" synagogue shooting, which he called "an attack at the heart of the Jewish people". An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman said an eight-year-old girl and her 31-year-old uncle wounded in the shooting attack in Poway, north of San Diego, on Saturday were from a southern town bordering the Gaza Strip. "The two moved from Sderot to San Diego a few years ago," spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said in a statement, noting their condition was "good". Sderot has come under repeated rocket and mortar attack from Palestinian militants in Gaza. The father of the wounded girl, Israel Dahan, said Sunday that his home and those of his mother and mother-in law had been hit by Palestinian fire and he had been wounded several times. "We left Sderot because of the rocket fire," he told Israeli public radio in Hebrew. "We left fire for fire." San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore said both Israelis were wounded by shrapnel in the attack on the final day of the week-long Jewish holiday of Passover. Dahan said he was at prayer inside the synagogue when the gunman entered. "I was the first to see him because I was sitting in front of the main door. I started shouting at people to run away," he told the radio. "My five-year-old daughter heard the shots and shut herself in the toilets," he said. "Luckily his weapon jammed." A 60-year-old woman, Lori Gilbert Kaye, was killed in the attack, with the community's rabbi wounded as well. Netanyahu denounced the shooting and sent condolences to Kaye's family. "The international community must step up the struggle against anti-Semitism," the prime minister said in a statement. He said he would convene a meeting of Israeli officials on the subject in light of the "increasing anti-Semitic attacks throughout the world". Gore identified the suspect, who was arrested after fleeing the scene, as 19-year-old John Earnest and said he had no prior arrest record. US President Donald Trump denounced the shooting as a "hate crime". Israeli President Reuven Rivlin called the attack "yet another painful reminder that anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews is still with us, everywhere." "No country and no society are immune," he said in a Sunday statement. "Only through education for Holocaust remembrance and tolerance can we deal with this plague." The shooting in Poway's Chabad synagogue came exactly six months after a white supremacist killed 11 people at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue -- the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in US history. Crime scene tape is placed in front of the Chabad of Poway Synagogue after a shooting on Saturday, April 27, 2019 in Poway, California