An attack took place this Friday evening in the center of Tel Aviv, Israel. A man in his thirties was killed and five other people were injured, according to an updated report from Israeli relief. When contacted, the police spoke of a “terrorist attack against civilians, a car-ram attack”.
The Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel’s equivalent of the Red Cross, said it had pronounced dead a man in his 30s and evacuated five wounded to hospitals in the Tel Aviv area after the attack on rue Kaufmann, the main artery that runs along the beach. Three were moderately injured, including a 17-year-old girl, and two lightly, according to this source. “All the victims are tourists,” the MDA said in a statement, without further details.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “has ordered the Israel Police to mobilize all reserve Border Police units, and to [l’armée] to mobilize additional forces to deal with terrorist attacks,” said a statement from his office.
Resurgence of violence in the Middle East
The attack occurred on a Shabbat evening and during the week of Passover, against the backdrop of an upsurge in violence in recent days in the Middle East. Earlier Friday, two British-Israeli sisters, aged 16 and 20, from the Israeli settlement of Efrat, were killed and their mother seriously injured in a Palestinian attack in the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
The two attacks on Friday come after Israeli strikes in Gaza and Lebanon against positions of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, in response to the firing of dozens of rockets against its territory.
This outbreak of fever follows the sudden irruption of Israeli forces and violence on Wednesday in the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam. International condemnations have multiplied and Hamas, in power in the Gaza Strip, has denounced an “unprecedented crime” by Israel, in the middle of Ramadan.