The body of a Palestinian man suspected of murdering an elderly Jewish woman on Tuesday has been discovered in Tel Aviv, in what police believe was death by suicide. 

Mousa Sarsour, 28, was found hanged in an abandoned building on Bar Kochba Street hours after he allegedly killed Shulamit Rachel Ovadiah, 84, in Holon. 

According to police, she was killed by blows to the head from a blunt object on Hahashmona’im Street in the Tel Aviv suburb.

CCTV footage of the alleged terror attack showed a man in dark clothing following the victim and then attacking her from behind. Authorities identified him as Mousa Sarsour, from the city of Qalqilya, in the central West Bank. He reportedly entered Israel on Tuesday with a valid work permit.  

Sarsour had not been identified as a security threat, but was reportedly questioned twice by police in recent weeks after they suspected he was in Israel illegally. He had no previous security offences.  

After the murder, IDF troops arrested five suspects in overnight raids in the West Bank town Sarta, some of them Sarsour’s relatives, in connection with the attack. 

On Wednesday morning, Public Security Minister Omer Bar Lev said in response to the attack: “The serious attack in Holon proves once again that Palestinian terrorism has no inhibitions and no mercy. Israel fights terrorists and their agents hard and uncompromisingly everywhere and at all times, especially in the last few months as the IDF, the police and the Shin Bet work day and night in pursuit of those who seek our harm.” 

Mrs Ovadiah’s murder came less than two weeks after police thwarted a mass terror attack planned by a Palestinian man caught carrying a firearm and pipe bombs in Jaffa.