Israel mourns four killed in attack by IS sympathiser

Throngs of Israelis attended funerals Wednesday for four people killed in a stabbing and car-ramming rampage by a convicted Islamic State group sympathiser, in one of the country's deadliest attacks in recent years.

Mourners carried the body of 67-year-old stabbing victim Menahem Yehezkel, draped in a blue and white Israeli flag, in southern Israel's Beersheba, where the attack took place a day earlier.

"You were a simple and modest man who kept the (Jewish) commands and studied Torah in the synagogue or at home along with your friends," Yifrach Yehezkel said at the funeral, praising his brother for quietly giving charity to the poor.

Israeli Education Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton, who attended the ceremony, said in a statement that Yehezkel "went for a walk and was stabbed by a vile killer who murdered four people... just because they were Jews".

Also in Beersheba, mourners buried Laura Yitzhak, a 43-year-old mother of three, who was fatally stabbed at a gas station.

Her husband Tal said his late wife was "strong, resilient".

"She immigrated from Morocco at age five. She said, in Israel it's safer. And then in the land of Israel, she was murdered," he told Israeli television, adding, "I understood she fought him like a lion."

- 'Painful' day -

Rabbi Moshe Krivitski, a father of four who was riding his bicycle when the attacker rammed him, was also laid to rest in Beersheba, where he had run a local soup kitchen for a decade.

Doris Yahbas, 49, also a mother of three, was buried in the nearby rural community of Gilat.

"A painful and sad day for the residents of Beersheba," mayor Ruvik Danilovich told reporters in the city.

The Shin Bet domestic security agency identified the assailant as Mohammed Abu al-Kiyan, a teacher in his thirties from the Bedouin town of Hura in the Negev desert.

One of six Bedouin citizens arrested in 2015 for alleged IS sympathies, he "admitted to supporting the Islamic State and participating in meetings of IS supporters in Hura", the security agency said in a statement, adding that he subsequently served five years in prison.

Armed bystanders shot Abu al-Kiyan dead on Tuesday as he refused to drop his knife.

Two other women were stabbed in the chest in the attack but were both in stable condition, the city's Soroka hospital said.

Police said they were on high alert nationwide for other potential attacks.

- Heckled -

The deadly incident drew criticism from Israeli opposition lawmakers, who said Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was not tough enough on terrorism.

Bennett, a former settler leader, heads a coalition that includes the Islamist movement Raam, the first Arab party to sit in government.

Raam leader Mansour Abbas had condemned the "criminal attack" on Tuesday.

Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who courted Raam before he was ousted last year, accused Bennett's government of "abandoning the Negev to Raam and the Islamic Movement".

Israeli ministers who attended the funerals faced heckling.

"I am here in the name of the government of Israel to promise we will do everything to uproot terrorism," said Diaspora Affairs Minister Nahman Shai, as mourners for Yitzhak nearly drowned him out.

Bennett on Wednesday praised those who shot the assailant and vowed that Israeli security forces would find anyone who helped the perpetrator.

"Whoever aided and abetted, inspired, incited or cooperated -- we will reach them," he said.

The Abu al-Kiyan tribe, to which the attacker belonged, "strongly" condemned his deadly rampage on Tuesday, saying it was an "individual" act that did "not represent the law-abiding members of the tribe who have always believed in coexistence".

Police later announced the arrest of two relatives of Abu al-Kiyan "on suspicion of not preventing a terrorism act."