At least seven people have been wounded in a suspected car-ramming and stabbing attack in Tel Aviv, according to Israeli police, on the second day of Israel’s largest military offensive in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, in decades.
Israeli police said on Tuesday they had received a report about “a car that attacked a number of civilians” in north Tel Aviv and that the suspect “has been neutralised”. A medic who examined him at the scene told Israel’s Kan radio that he had been shot dead.
“It appears that the suspect was driving a vehicle travelling from south to north, rammed into pedestrians standing in the shopping centre and proceeded to get out of the vehicle to stab civilians with a sharp object,” police said, adding that three of those wounded were in a serious condition.
Hamas, the Palestinian group running the besieged Gaza Strip, praised the attack as a “heroic operation” that was an “initial response to the occupation’s crimes against our people in the Jenin refugee camp”.
“This is an implementation of what the [Palestinian] resistance confirmed – that the occupation will pay the price for its crimes,” Hazem Qasem, a spokesperson for the group, said in a statement.
“We praise the heroes of our people and the fighters in Jenin.”
In a later statement, Hamas said the attack was carried out by Hussein Khalaylah, whom it identified as one of its members.
Israel launched a ground and aerial assault on Jenin refugee camp on Monday morning, killing at least nine people and wounding dozens more.
The operation, which was still continuing on Tuesday, has been slammed by Palestinians as a “new war crime“.
