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| - A gunman opened fire Thursday at Jews in the mixed city of Lod, which has become a flashpoint of Arab-Jewish clashes this week, wounding one person, Israeli police said. A witness contacted by AFP said the casualty was part of a group of armed Jews patrolling the city, near Tel Aviv. "In Lod shots fired at a group of Jewish individuals. 1 injured, taken to hospital. Police searching for suspects," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld tweeted. Images circulated by Honenu, a right-wing advocacy group, showed a young man with a gunshot wound in the leg being carried away. According to Honenu, he was a medic responding to a report on Arab residents of Lod throwing rocks at Jews. Earlier this week, an Israeli Arab was shot dead in Lod by a group of Jews reportedly being stoned. Synagogues were vandalised and cars torched in the mixed Arab-Jewish city, leading to police imposing night-time curfews. The far-right Religious Zionism party head, Betzalel Smotrich, who was in Lod on Thursday, accused police on Twitter of "not doing anything". He called for the military to be brought in to enforce order in the city "before there's a bloodbath". Also on Thursday, a Jewish family was attacked in the Arab city of Umm al-Fahm before being rescued by police, and an officer was shot and wounded near Ramla, another mixed city near Lod, police said. Eight people were arrested for throwing stones at police in Haifa. A soldier was hospitalised after being beaten in Jaffa, with police preventing far-right Jews from carrying out a march. Earlier Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said police were being reinforced "and there's the option of using IDF soldiers" to maintain peace in mixed cities. An Arab was brutally beaten Wednesday by a far-right mob and an Arab-owned shop vandalised in Bat Yam, south of Tel Aviv. Police said they were monitoring far-right Jews on social media planning attacks on Arabs. Inter-communal violence has flared as clashes since last weekend spiralled into a conflict in which the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has fired rockets from Gaza and Israel has launched air strikes. gl-jjm/hc
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