Several people were injured in a car attack in Tel Aviv. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the attacker wanted to take revenge on the Israeli military operation in Jenin.
At least seven people were injured in an attack in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv. A Palestinian attacker drove his car into a crowd of people and then stabbed them with a sharp object, police said. According to the Israeli rescue service Magen David Adom, five injured people were taken to hospitals. A 46-year-old was therefore still in mortal danger in the afternoon.
According to Israeli sources, the attacker was a 20-year-old Palestinian from the West Bank. According to Israeli security sources, the man from a village near Hebron entered Israel without a permit. He was not known to the Israeli authorities. Previously, several Israeli and Palestinian media had identified the attacker as a 23-year-old, but later corrected this.
The radical Islamic Palestinian group Hamas claimed responsibility for the crime. The attacker belongs to Hamas and wanted to take revenge for the Israeli military operation in Jenin, which has been ongoing since Monday, in which at least ten Palestinians were killed and around 100 injured, the Islamist group ruling the Gaza Strip said.
Police call for vigilance
According to the authorities, the attacker was shot dead by an armed passerby. Israeli police chief Kobi Shabtai said at the scene that several people linked to the suspect had been arrested. The circumstances surrounding the event are currently being investigated. He called on the population to be more vigilant.
According to the Israeli security authorities, the motivation for attacks has increased as a result of the military operation in the Palestinian city of Jenin. Israel’s army launched one of the largest military operations in the West Bank in decades on Monday night. After several air strikes, the army entered the Palestinian city of Jenin with more than a thousand soldiers. There, the military fought hours of firefights with armed residents. An end to the military operation was not foreseeable in the afternoon.
