An Italian tourist was killed and five other Italian and British citizens were wounded when a car rammed into a group of tourists in Tel Aviv, Israel’s commercial hub on Friday, according to Israeli authorities. The attack came amid a surge of violence over Easter week that included Israel exchanging retaliatory rocket fire with both Syria and Lebanon and in the Gaza Strip.
The round of violence erupted after Israeli police raided the mosque earlier in the week, sparking unrest in the contested capital and outrage across the Arab world. Militants fired an unusually large rocket barrage at Israel from southern Lebanon on Thursday – some of the heaviest and most serious cross-border violence since Israel’s 2006 war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants – as well as from Gaza.
On Sunday, Israeli warplanes and artillery struck targets in Syria following rare rocket fire from the northeastern neighbour, as Jewish-Muslim tensions reached a peak Sunday at a volatile Jerusalem shrine with simultaneous religious rituals.
Thousands of Jewish worshippers gathered at the city’s Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews can pray, for a mass priestly benediction prayer service for the Passover holiday. At the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a walled esplanade above the Western Wall, hundreds of Palestinians performed prayers as part of observances during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Hundreds of Jews also visited the Al-Aqsa compound under heavy police guard Sunday, to whistles and religious chants from Palestinians protesting their presence.
In the Tel Aviv car-ramming late Friday, the alleged attacker rammed his vehicle into a group of civilians near a popular seaside park, police said. Israel’s rescue service said a 30-year-old Italian man was killed, while five other British and Italian tourists – including a 74-year-old man and a 17-year-old girl – were receiving medical treatment for mild to moderate injuries.
Police said they shot and killed the driver of the car and identified him as a 45-year-old Palestinian citizen.
A video circulating on social media showed the car hurtling along a sidewalk for several hundred metres before crashing out of control.
In a separate incident, two British-Israeli women were shot to death near a settlement in the occupied West Bank.
Palestinian assailants carried out the pair of attacks on Friday, as tensions soared after days of fighting at Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site, officials said.
No groups claimed responsibility for either attack. But the Hamas militant group that rules Gaza praised both incidents as retaliation for Israeli raids earlier in the week on the Al-Aqsa mosque – the third-holiest site in Islam. On Tuesday, police had arrested and beat hundreds of Palestinians there, who responded by hurling rocks and firecrackers at officers.
Friday’s airstrikes on neighbouring Lebanon targeted Hamas militant sites, the Israeli military said, accusing the group of firing the nearly three dozen rockets that slammed into open areas and towns in northern Israel on Thursday.
The unrest comes at a delicate time for Jerusalem’s Old City, which was suffused with religious fervor and teeming with pilgrims from around the world. The Christian faithful retraced the route Jesus is said to have taken for Good Friday and Jews celebrated the weeklong Passover holiday, while Muslims prayed and fasted for Ramadan.