A 30-year-old man has been killed and several others have been injured in the incident, authorities say.
At least one person has been killed and several wounded in a suspected attack in Tel Aviv, Israel’s commercial hub.
Israeli police said a white car rammed into a group of people near a popular seaside park on Friday. It swerved off a road toward a pedestrian and bike path before flipping over.
Police then shot the driver, whom they accused of reaching for a weapon.
The exact nature of the attack was not immediately clear, but Israel’s Foreign Ministry referred to it as a “terror attack”, a term Israeli officials use for assaults by Palestinians.
An Israeli security source identified the suspect as an Israeli Arab from Kafr Qassem, near the border with the West Bank. He had no previous criminal record.
Israel’s rescue service said a 30-year-old man was killed. He was later identified as an Italian tourist. At least five other Italian and British citizens, including a 17-year-old teenager, were injured in the car attack, according to Israeli authorities.
Security forces mobilised
Israel has mobilised police and army reserves after the attack in Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Bejamin Netanyahu’s office said.
“The Prime Minister has 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,” a statement from the premier’s office said.
Al Jazeera correspondent Hoda Abdel-Hamid said that the Tel Aviv attack will amplify calls for Netanyahu to pursue a hardline approach toward Palestinians.
“I think this does increase the pressure on the prime minister many folds,” she said, citing “hardliners” within the Netanyahu government “who have been preaching all along for much tougher stance when it comes with dealing with Palestinians”.
“The mayor of Tel Aviv has spoken with Israeli media, and he actually said that all this is happening at this particular time because in his words, the enemy is taking advantage of the weakness they see among Israeli society at the moment,” Abdel-Hamid added.
Earlier on Friday, two people were killed and one seriously wounded in a shooting attack in the occupied West Bank.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for either attack.
The escalation in tensions comes after Israeli forces stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem on successive days this week, firing stun grenades and attacking Palestinians as they gathered for Ramadan prayers.
Late on Thursday night, Israeli launched air strikes on Palestinian targets in Lebanon and Gaza that was followed by a shooting attack in the occupied West Bank that killed two Israelis.
Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American–Islamic Relations, told Al Jazeera that the violence on Friday was “the result of decades of Israeli subjugation, humiliation and oppression of the Palestinians”.
He pointed to the frustration and anger following the Israeli military’s raids expelling worshippers from Al-Aqsa: “They kicked them out, they beat them, they handcuffed them and put cuffs on their legs and feet and threw them on the ground like sacks of meat.”
“So you will see that the Palestinians will react in defending themselves by all means possible.”
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