Israel is preparing this Saturday to mobilize its reserve police and reinforce its military personnel after the death of three people in two attacks carried out the day before, in the middle of a escalation of tensions in the Middle East.
On Friday night, an Italian tourist was struck by a car near the Tel Aviv waterfront, and seven other people were injured.
The driver, killed by the police, was 45 years old and was from Kfar Kassem, an Arab town in central Israel.
This Saturday there were still three people in the Ichilov hospital in the coastal city with minor injuries, the establishment said.
Hours earlier, there was another attack in the Jewish settlement of Efrat, in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
Two British-Israeli sisters aged 16 and 20 were killed and their mother seriously injured during a attack with firearms against your vehicle.
more troops
Following the attacks, which coincided with the Jewish Passover celebrations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered “to mobilize all reserve police units at the borders and to mobilize supplementary forces (of the army) to face the terrorist attacks”.
The police specified that four reserve battalions of its border corps would be deployed as of Sunday in the center of the cities.
The battalions will add to units already mobilized in the mixed city of Lod and in the Jerusalem region.
In the West Bank, the Israeli army declared this Saturday that it had been shot at night, near the Palestinian village of Yabad (north).
The soldiers “shot at the attackers” who were aboard a vehicle, and one person was identified as being shot, according to a military statement.
Tension in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem
The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas claimed the Tel Aviv attack was a “natural and legitimate response” to Israeli “aggression” on Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque on Wednesday.
That day, Israeli police stormed the holy site to violently evict Muslim worshipers, actions that drew widespread international condemnation.
The brutal intervention of the armed forces, in full celebrations of the Muslim month of Ramadan, ended with 350 detainees and 37 wounded, according to the police and the Palestinian Red Crescent.
Al Aqsa is located on the Mosque Square, Islam’s third holy site, and is located in East Jerusalem, the Palestinian sector of the city occupied and annexed by Israel since 1967.
The complex is erected on top of the Temple Mount, considered the holiest place in Judaism.
Netanyahu claimed that Israeli forces were forced to act “to restore order” by the presence of “extremists” at the mosque.
On Thursday, some thirty rockets were fired at Israel from Lebanon, in biggest climb since 2006 on the border between these two countries, which are technically still at war after several conflicts.
Israel responded by bombing Hamas infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, where it rules, and in southern Lebanon.
According to the Israeli army, the rockets were fired by “Palestinians” and probably by Hamas.
international concern
The European Union (EU) condemned the escalation of violence on Saturday and called for containment.
“We urge all parties to exercise maximum restraint, avoid further escalations and promote calm on the occasion of religious festivals,” the bloc’s head of diplomacy, Josep Borrell, said in a statement.
Netanyahu has vowed to make Israel’s “enemies” pay a “heavy price” for “every aggression” against his country.
Since April 2022, no rockets have been launched from Lebanon towards Israel, which then also carried out attacks against its neighbor.
However, this it is the most serious incident since the 2006 war against the Shiite movement Hezbollah, very present in southern Lebanon.
“The entire resistance axis is in a state of alert,” Naim Qasem, the movement’s deputy, declared on Friday.
Fuente: AFP
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