Palestinian attacker rams car into crowded Tel Aviv bus stop, 8 wounded

A Hamas militant rammed his car into a crowded Tel Aviv bus stop Tuesday and began stabbing people, wounding eight in an attack that Palestinian armed groups called revenge for an Israeli military offensive in the occupied West Bank. A bystander shot and killed the attacker.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated the operation in the Jenin refugee camp, one of the most intense in the territory in nearly two decades, was winding down. But he vowed to carry out similar operations in the future.

At these moments we are completing the mission, and I can say that our extensive operation in Jenin is not a one-off, he said during a visit to a military post on the outskirts of Jenin.

 

Late Tuesday, a security official said troops were beginning to pull out of the camp. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity pending a formal announcement, said it was not clear how long the withdrawal would take due to continued fighting.

Israel struck the camp, known as a bastion of Palestinian militants, early Monday in an operation it said was aimed at destroying and confiscating weapons. Palestinian health officials said 11 people had been killed and dozens wounded.

Big military bulldozers tore through alleyways, leaving heavy damage to roads and buildings, and thousands of residents fled the camp. People said electricity and water were knocked out. The army says the bulldozers were necessary because roads were booby-trapped with explosives.

The military said it had confiscated thousands of weapons, bomb-making materials and caches of money. Weapons were found in militant hideouts and civilian areas alike, in one case beneath a mosque, the military said.

Late Tuesday, Israeli officials and Palestinians reported continued fighting near the camp's government hospital. Amateur video on social media showed shots being fired through the wall of a building resembling the hospital, though it was unclear who fired the shots.

The large-scale raid comes amid a more than yearlong spike in violence that has created a challenge for Netanyahu's far-right government, which is dominated by ultranationalists who have called for tougher action against Palestinian militants only to see the fighting worsen.

Over 140 Palestinians have been killed this year in the West Bank, and Palestinian attacks targeting Israelis have killed at least 25 people, including a shooting last month that killed four settlers.

The sustained operation has raised warnings from humanitarian groups of a deteriorating situation.

Doctors Without Borders accused the army of firing tear gas into a hospital, filling the emergency room with smoke and forcing emergency patients to be treated in a main hall. This is unacceptable, said Jovana Arsenijevic, the group's operations coordinator in Jenin.

The office of the UN's human rights chief said the scale of the operation raises a host of serious issues with respect to international human rights norms and standards, including protecting and respecting the right to life.

With airstrikes and a large presence of ground troops, the raid bore hallmarks of Israeli military tactics during the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s.

But there are also differences. It's more limited in scope, with Israeli military operations focused on several strongholds of Palestinian militants.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a hard-line settler leader, rushed to the scene of Tuesday's attack in Tel Aviv. Israeli media reported that a pregnant woman who was among the wounded lost her baby.

We knew that terror would raise its head, Ben-Gvir said. He praised the person who killed the attacker and called for arming more citizens, as he was heckled by an angry onlooker.

The attacker was identified as a 20-year-old Palestinian man from the southern West Bank city of Hebron.

The Islamic militant group Hamas praised him as a martyr fighter and called the ramming heroic and revenge for the military operation in Jenin. Islamic Jihad, a militant group with a large presence in Jenin, also praised the assault.

It was not immediately clear if the man was dispatched by Hamas or acted on his own.

In Jenin, rubble littered the streets, and columns of black smoke periodically rose above the skyline over the camp, which along with an adjacent town of the same name has been a flashpoint of Israeli-Palestinian violence for years.

Jenin Mayor Nidal Al-Obeidi said around 4,000 Palestinians, nearly one third of the camp, had fled to stay with relatives or in shelters.

Kefah Ja'ayyasah, a camp resident, said soldiers forcibly entered her home and locked the family inside.

They took the young men of my family to the upper floor, and they left the women and children trapped in the apartment at the first floor, she said.

She claimed soldiers would not let her take food to the children and blocked an ambulance crew from entering the home when she yelled for help, before eventually allowing the family passage to a hospital.

Across the West Bank, Palestinians observed a general strike to protest the Israeli raid.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said Tuesday that the two-day death toll rose to 12. The Israeli military claimed at least 10 were militants, but did not provide details. There was no immediate information on the latest death.

The Palestinian self-rule government in the West Bank and three Arab countries with normalised ties with Israel Jordan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have condemned Israel's incursion, as did Saudi Arabia and the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

At a news conference in Ankara with his Jordanian counterpart, Turkey's new foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, urged Israeli authorities to exercise common sense and refrain from attacks.

In Berlin, Germany's Foreign Ministry condemned the Tel Aviv attack, but also called on Israel to ensure the safety of civilians and maintain access for humanitarian aid.

Israel has been carrying out near daily raids in the West Bank in response to a series of deadly Palestinian attacks in early 2022. It says the raids are meant to crack down on Palestinians militants and thwart attacks.

The Palestinians say such violence is the inevitable result of 56 years of occupation and the absence of any political process with Israel. They also point to increased West Bank settlement construction and violence by extremist settlers.

Israel says most of those killed have been militants, but stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and people uninvolved in confrontations have also died.

Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for their hoped-for independent state.