American Graduate Student Killed in Stabbing Rampage Near Tel Aviv

RAMALLAH, West Bank — A Palestinian on a stabbing rampage on Tuesday along a coastal promenade near Tel Aviv killed an American combat veteran who was a graduate student at Vanderbilt University.

The attacks occurred along a popular seaside boulevard in Jaffa, about a mile away from where Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was meeting with a former president of Israel, Shimon Peres.

The stabbing attacks, carried out over 20 minutes, came just after Mr. Biden arrived for a two-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories. He is expected to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority on Wednesday.

The American was identified as Taylor Force, 28, a first-year M.B.A. student at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt, the university said in a statement. He was one of 29 students from the graduate school on a trip to Israel to learn about global entrepreneurship, according to a news release from Vanderbilt. The rest of the students, as well as the four faculty and staff members that accompanied them, were safe, it said.

“A Palestinian terrorist murdered an American citizen, Taylor Force, tonight in Jaffa,” Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu said on Twitter. “May his memory be a blessing.”

In a statement on Tuesday night, John Kirby, the State Department spokesman, said: “We offer our heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of Taylor and all those affected by these senseless attacks.”

According to his LinkedIn profile, Mr. Force had served as an Army officer from 2009 to 2014, including tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point.

“We have just been notified, and we have no details about anything,” said Mr. Force’s father, Stuart, when reached by telephone.

On Tuesday evening, Mr. Biden was at the Peres Center for Peace in Jaffa, a serene seaside district that adjoins Tel Aviv, when a Palestinian man ran down a popular boulevard attacking groups of people, witnesses said.

A video shot by a witness and posted on YouTube by Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, showed a thin man wearing a hoodie running down the Jaffa promenade, lunging at passengers in passing vehicles. An unseen person could be heard yelling in Hebrew, “Terrorist! Terrorist!”

Luba Samri, a police spokeswoman, said 12 others were injured before the attacker was fatally shot by the police.

The assailant was identified as Bashar Masalha, a 22-year-old Palestinian from the West Bank and a member of the Islamist group Hamas, the group said in a statement posted on Twitter.

The attack was unusual because it occurred in Jaffa, a place where Arabs and Jews often mix along the usually crowded seaside boulevards. Ms. Samri said two Arabs were among the wounded.

Emily Young, an Israeli-American journalist and producer, said she had rushed toward a bloodied man on the ground.

“He was badly stabbed on his eyebrow, and I put my jacket on his face and applied pressure,” she said.

The man spoke Russian. Someone ran up and said that no one could find the man’s wife. Ms. Young, 26, said she accompanied the wounded Russian speaker to the hospital. There, she learned that his pregnant wife had also been stabbed.

Jamie Southwick, who identified himself as a cousin of Mr. Force, described him in Twitter messages as an accomplished skier who favored the slopes of Deer Valley, Utah. Mr. Southwick said they had traveled in Europe together in 2014.

Barrett Caldwell, 30, said he met Mr. Force through Mr. Southwick. The three went to Ireland before Mr. Force enrolled at Vanderbilt. “He was dead-set focused,” Mr. Caldwell, who also lives in Nashville, said in a telephone interview. “The dude had big dreams.”

The stabbings were just one episode in a day of deadly violence. Along with Mr. Force, three Palestinian attackers and a 50-year-old Palestinian woman who tried to lunge at security forces with a knife were killed, the authorities said.

In addition to Tuesday’s victims, a five-month surge in violence has killed nearly 30 Israelis, a Palestinian bystander and an American student, Ezra Schwartz, 18, who was fatally shot in the West Bank in November. About 180 Palestinians have also been killed, most while attempting attacks, or suspected of attempting attacks. One of the attackers, Mahmoud Shalan, was a Palestinian-American teenager from Tampa, Fla.