Policewoman shot dead, 10 injured in southern Israel attack

Israeli police on Sunday said a female border officer was killed in a shooting attack on a bus station that first responders say injured 10 others.

The incident took place a day before the first anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attack.

"Paramedics have pronounced a 25-year-old female deceased, and are evacuating 10 casualties," emergency service provider Magen David Adom said in a statement.

Police identified the victim as Sergeant Shira Haya Suslik, a member of the border police, and said she "fell during an encounter with a terrorist in an attack that occurred today at the central bus station in Beersheba."

Police said the incident was being treated as a "suspected terrorist attack".

"A number of injured on the scene. The terrorist was neutralised at the scene and many police forces of the southern district are at the scene," said a police spokesman in a statement.

Hamas praised the "heroic" attack, saying it "came in defence of our people, our land, and our holy sites".

The incident comes just days after a Hamas-claimed shooting attack last week in which seven people were killed in Israel's commercial hub of Tel Aviv.

The Tel Aviv attack -- one of the deadliest in the country since the October 7 Hamas attack -- came as Iran fired about 200 missiles at Israel, sending hundreds of thousands of people into public shelters.