Tel Aviv: An Italian tourist was killed and five people were wounded in a car ramming attack in Tel Aviv that came hours after two Israeli-British sisters were killed in a shooting attack in the occupied West Bank, and after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called up additional forces
As the news spread, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced he had “instructed the Israel Police to mobilise all reserve border police units and has directed the IDF to mobilise additional forces to confront the terror attacks”.
The attacks, after a night of crossborder strikes in Gaza and Lebanon, added to an atmosphere of heightened Israeli-Palestinian tensions following Israeli police raids in Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque earlier in the week.
In the latest attack, a car ploughed into a group on a street near a popular bike and walking path on a Tel Aviv promenade. The driver was shot dead by a nearby police officer when he tried to pull a gun, police said.
An Israeli security source identified the assailant as an Arab citizen of Israel from the town of Kafr Qassem.
Reuters video from shortly after the incident showed a white car upside down on the grass of a park. Police cordoned off the area that was brimming with emergency responders.
The Magen David Adom ambulance service said the victims were all foreign tourists and Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani confirmed that an Italian had been killed and other Italians may have been among the wounded.
Read the article by Rami Amichay in The Age.