Six wounded in stabbing attack during Jerusalem's gay parade

Six people were stabbed at Jerusalem's annual gay pride parade on Thursday, in one of the gravest attacks on the gay community in Israel, Israeli officials and eyewitnesses told Xinhua.

A police spokesperson said the assailant was captured and identified as Yishai Schlissel, a Jewish ultra-Orthodox man who carried out a similar attack in 2005, injuring three people. Schlissel was released from prison only three weeks ago.

A spokesman with Israel's emergency service said that a woman in her 30s was rushed to hospital unconscious, in a critical condition. Two other men, also in their 30s, sustained moderate injuries, and another two men and a woman were lightly wounded.

The incident occurred as the parade marched from the Independence Park to the Liberty Bell Park in central Jerusalem.

Tom Canning, a spokesperson with the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance and an eyewitness to the event, told Xinhua that the attacker "ran through the crowd with a butcher's knife and stabbed whoever he could."

"People lay down on the ground screaming, bleeding, people ran away. Some people ran after him and pushed him to the ground; the police came and held him down," he said.

Jerusalem's 14th pride parade was supposed to be a day of celebration, sending a message of love and tolerance to the city, the organizers said at the beginning of the event.

However, because many in this volatile city are ultra-religious, the parade draws much controversy and tensions.

Just across the parade, some two dozen anti-gay activists with a Jewish extremist organization called Lehava, rallied in a counter-demonstration. They chanted: "Perverts out! Jerusalem is holy city!"

"I'm not here to tell people what to do in their own homes, while I may not be supportive of what they are doing," said Michael Rosenfeld, a protester against the parade.

"Jerusalem is holy city," he said, "doing it in Jerusalem is nothing more than a provocation, (they) are just really hurting the conservative society here."

The attack shocked many in the Israeli society. Politicians across the political spectrum condemned the attack, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"A despicable hate crime was committed this evening in Jerusalem," Netanyahu said in a statement. "In Israel, everyone, including the gay community, has the right to live in peace, and we will defend that right," he added.

In 2009, a shooting attack in a gay center in Tel Aviv resulted in the death of two youth. The perpetrator was never caught. Endit