An Italian tourist has been killed and seven other people wounded in a suspected car ramming attack near a beach in Tel Aviv. The attack occurred at 21:25 local time (19:25 BST) when a 45-year-old man drove a Kia car along the city’s beachside boardwalk, hitting several pedestrians before overturning on the lawn of the Charles Clore Garden. A police officer at a nearby petrol station heard the commotion and saw the driver of the car “trying to reach for what looked like a rifle-like object that was with him” and then “neutralized him”. Israeli medics have confirmed that there were a total of eight casualties from the attack and that all were tourists.
Following the incident, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mobilised police and army reservists as part of efforts to counter terrorism. The attack comes after two British-Israeli sisters were killed and their mother injured in a shooting in the occupied West Bank earlier on the same day. Tensions are running high following two nights of Israeli police raids at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque – Islam’s third holiest site – earlier this week. The raids triggered violent confrontations with Palestinians inside the mosque and caused anger across the region.
The attacks took place hours after the Israeli military carried out air strikes on targets belonging to the Palestinian militant group Hamas in southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. The military said the strikes were a response to a barrage of 34 rockets fired from Lebanon into northern Israel on Thursday, which it blamed on the group. Hamas did not confirm it had fired the rockets, but leader Ismail Haniyeh said Palestinians would not “sit with their arms crossed” in the face of Israeli aggression.
Source: BBC
