Funerals held for three killed in Israeli Independence Day attack as police hunt suspects

The Magen David Adom emergency service named them as Oren Ben Yiftach, a father of six; Yonatan Habakkuk, a father of five; and Boaz Gol, a father of five. All were in their 40s, the MDA said earlier.Police said theThe hospitals treating them said Friday that three were in life-threatening conditions.On Friday, Israeli police named the two men suspected of carrying out the attack as 19-year-old Assad Yussef Assad Al-Rafa’i and 20-year-old Subhi Imad Subhi Abu Shakir, residents of Jenin province in the West Bank.Police are conducting a manhunt for the two suspects involving helicopters, road blocks and vehicle checkpoints.Pictures from the scene Thursday night showed multiple emergency vehicles including ambulances and motorcycles arriving after reports of the attack.”This is a very difficult event. When we arrived at the place we noticed that it was a complex scene,” Alon Rizkan, a paramedic from Israel’s emergency response service Magen David Adom (MDA), said in a statement Thursday.”Near the square in Ibn Gvirol, a 40-year-old man was lying next to a car with serious injuries to his body. We performed medical tests but he was without signs of life and we had to declare his death. “I went down the stairs to the nearby park, we performed resuscitation operations on a 40-year-old man who was unconscious and in the end we were forced to declare his death,” the paramedic added.”Tens of meters away, another wounded man lay unconscious, also in his 40s with serious injuries, and after resuscitation, he was pronounced dead,” he said.Elad, where the attack took place, is a quiet, small and largely religious town in central Israel not far from Ben Gurion International airport. Blinken condemns attackOn Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned what he described as a “terrorist attack,” saying in a statement it “was particularly heinous coming as Israel celebrated its Independence Day.””We remain in close contact with our Israeli friends and partners and stand firmly with them in the face of this attack,” he added.US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price also said Thursday that the attack appears to be “the latest in a what has been a string of despicable terrorist attacks that have rocked Israel in recent weeks.””We saw them in advance of this holy period — the confluence of Easter, of Passover, of Ramadan. We saw them in advance of the Negev Summit. And if this is what it appears to be, it is something that we would condemn in strongest terms,” Price said.”Our commitment to our Israeli partners, to Israel’s security, that is ironclad, and we’ll provide any and all assistance that may be required in this case,” he added.CNN’s Jennifer Hansler and Jorge Engels contributed reporting.