Home ›› 09 Apr 2023 ›› Asia Biz
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mobilised police and army reserves Friday after separate attacks killed three people, including an Italian tourist, in the West Bank and Tel Aviv, in the latest escalation of deadly violence.
Despite appeals for restraint, violence has surged since Israeli police clashed with Palestinians Wednesday inside Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque, with Israel bombarding both Gaza and Lebanon following rocket fire by Palestinian militants, reports NDTV.
The latest flare-up in tensions comes during what is both the Jewish Passover and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Earlier on Friday, two British-Israeli sisters aged 16 and 20 were killed, and their mother seriously wounded in a shooting attack in the occupied West Bank.
Israel’s army said it had launched a manhunt for the perpetrators.
Later, in central Tel Aviv, one man was killed and seven people aged between 17 and 74 wounded when a car rammed into people walking on a cycling path along the seafront, and flipped over, Israeli rescue services and police said.
“All the victims were tourists,” the Magen David Adom emergency service said. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni identified the deceased as 36-year-old Alessandro Parini.
The Ichilov hospital in Tel Aviv said it had received three injured Britons and one wounded Italian.
A police spokesman told AFP that “the terrorist was neutralised, it was a terror attack against civilians, a car ramming attack”.
Shortly afterwards, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “instructed the Israel Police to mobilise all reserve border police units and has directed the IDF to mobilise additional forces”, his office said.
Oded Revivi, mayor of the illegal settlement of Efrat, confirmed that the dead in the West Bank shooting were Israeli sisters aged 16 and 20, and that the wounded woman was their mother.
A British diplomat later confirmed that the two also held UK passports, while calling for “all parties... to de-escalate tensions”.
Friday’s attacks came after Israel launched air strikes and an artillery bombardment before dawn in response to rocket fire from the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.
Israel “struck targets, including terror infrastructures, belonging to the Hamas terrorist organisation in southern Lebanon”, the army said.
AFP journalists heard explosions in Lebanon’s Tyre region as well as in Gaza, where Israeli air raids began before midnight. The Lebanese army said it had found and dismantled a multiple rocket launcher in an olive grove in the Marjayoun area near the border, still loaded with six primed rockets.
