A Palestinian man drove his car into a crowded bus stop in Tel Aviv on Tuesday and then began stabbing people, wounding nine in an attack reportedly considered to be done in retaliation to Israeli troops' ongoing military operation in the occupied West Bank.
Police chief Kobi Shabtai told reporters at the scene that an armed civilian shot and killed the assailant.
The attack came as Israeli troops pressed ahead with their hunt for Palestinian militants and weapons in a refugee camp, after military bulldozers tore through alleys and thousands of residents fled to safety. The two-day Palestinian death toll rose to 10.
The attacker drove his pickup truck into a bus stop on Pinchas Rosen Street and stabbed one of the victims in the neck. The Shin Bet domestic security agency identified the attacker as Abed al-Wahab Khalila, 20, from the southern West Bank town of As-Samu, near Hebron, The Guardian reported.
The large-scale raid of the Jenin camp, which began Monday, is one of the most intense military operations in the occupied West Bank in nearly two decades. More than 140 Palestinians have been killed this year in the West Bank, part of more than a yearlong spike in violence. Palestinian attacks targeting Israelis have killed at least 26 people.
The Hamas militant group praised Tuesday's attack in Tel Aviv as heroic and revenge for the military operation in Jenin and later claimed the driver was a member, though it was not immediately clear if the attacker was dispatched by the group or acted on his own. Islamic Jihad, a militant group with a large presence in Jenin, also praised the assault.
Israeli's internal security agency, the Shin Bet, identified the attacker as a Palestinian from the West Bank with no prior security record. Shabtai, the police chief, said that several people connected to the man were arrested.
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.
(With PTI inputs.)
