TEL AVIV, Israel (Ma'an) -- Israeli police have made no arrests after hundreds of football supporters attacked Palestinian workers at a shopping mall in Jerusalem, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported Friday.
The assault in Malha mall on Monday was "a mass lynching attempt," cleaner Mohammed Yusuf told Haaretz.
An Israeli police spokesman did not respond to inquiries from Ma'an, but witnesses told Haaretz that hundreds of football fans flooded the mall after a match and chanted anti-Arab slogans, screaming "Death to the Arabs."
The football supporters verbally abused and spat on three Palestinian women who were in the food court with their children. When Palestinian workers tried to help them, the mostly-teenage rioters assaulted them.
"They caught some of them and beat the hell out of them," bakery owner Yair told Haaretz.
"They hurled people into shops, and smashed them against shop windows. I don't understand how none shattered into pieces. One cleaner was attacked by some 20 people, poor guy, and then they had a go at his brother who works in a nearby pizza shop and came to his rescue."
Attackers asked Jewish shop owners for knives to use as weapons but none obliged, onlookers said.
Malha's executive director Gideon Avrahami described the incident as "a disgraceful, shocking, racist incident; simply terrible."
But despite CCTV footage of the riot, Jerusalem police told Haaretz that no one was arrested because no complaint was filed.
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