A man stopped by the police just off Temple Mount in Jerusalem grabbed an officer's gun and fired it, prompting the unit to shoot him dead, the force said on Saturday.
The Jerusalem incident overnight at the edge of the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex came at a high point of Muslim attendance for the holy month of Ramadan amid heightened fears of an escalation in violence. Israeli-Palestinian tensions are simmering after months of violence in areas of Jerusalem and the West Bank and friction at Al-Aqsa has often set off violence in recent years.
The sacred site, known to Muslims as The Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount, remained relatively quiet on Saturday.
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The slain man was identified as Mohammad Khaled Al-Asibi, 26, a resident of the Bedouin town Hura in south Israel. Lawmaker Mansour Abbas, whose Ra'am party is popular there, said he was a medical student and questioned the police account.
"All we demand is the truth," Abbas said. The Justice Ministry department for investigating police conduct is looking into the incident, a spokesperson said, adding the procedure was not a formal investigation.
Asked if the unit's response was due to allegations of misconduct, she said: "There are such claims, and that's why we're looking into it."
Police released CCTV of what they said was the attacker walking across the complex alone right before the incident, which a spokesperson said happened in "seconds," and denied reports he had intervened in an altercation with a female worshipper.
The attacker's village council called for a thorough investigation of his killing and a general strike Saturday in protest. Hours after the incident, the muddy stone alleyway leading to Al-Aqsa Mosque was still stained with blood. Al-Asibi's family said he was a physician who had recently passed his exams and earned his M.D. in Romania. He returned to his hometown a month ago, his cousin said and was caring for his sick father as he worked to get certified in Israel.
"He is a polite, kind man from a family of doctors who was going to Al-Aqsa for spiritual reasons," his cousin Fahad Al-Asibi said. "If you want us to believe that he tried to attack police, then show us the security footage."
A police spokesperson pushed back on Palestinian accounts, insisting there was no woman walking to the compound at midnight because the complex was closed to visitors under an agreement with an Islamic trust called the Waqf controlled by Jordan.
Nonetheless, a few dozen people have been trying to sleep at the mosque overnight during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, prompting Israeli police to intervene and try to evict the worshippers.
The police spokesperson said Al-Asibi first aroused suspicion walking toward the shuttered compound. After being stopped for questioning, the spokesperson said Al-Asibi jumped on one of the officers and grabbed his gun, managing to fire two bullets toward policemen as the officer struggled to restrain him. Police described the incident as an attempted terrorist attack and said they shot and killed him in self-defense. No officers were injured. The spokesperson said there was no camera on the inner wall of the compound that could have captured the incident.
Palestinian worshippers at the compound Saturday disagreed. Noureddine, a 17-year-old who lived in the neighborhood and declined to give his last name, said he saw Al-Asibi confront police who had stopped a female worshipper on her way to Al-Aqsa Mosque. Al-Asibi's relationship to the woman was not clear. He said some kind of disagreement broke out between Al-Asibi and the officers before he heard a dozen shots ring out.
His cousin Fahad said Al-Asibi was worried about making the trip from Israel's Negev desert to Al-Aqsa because his ailing father relied on him. "But he went because praying there during Ramadan means a lot to him," he said.
On Friday, more than 200,000 Palestinians gathered at the compound for noon prayers, which passed peacefully.
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