An Italian tourist has been killed and seven others injured in a suspected car crash near a Tel Aviv beach, Israeli medical experts say.
Italy’s foreign minister said Israel identified the dead man as Italian citizen Alessandro Perini.
Footage from the scene shows an overturned car near a promenade and an Israeli police officer opening fire.
The local police say that the suspected attacker was shot dead by the officers.
The attack came after two British-Israeli sisters were killed and their mother injured in a shooting in the occupied West Bank earlier on Friday.
At 21:25 local time (19:25 BST), a 45-year-old man drove a Kia along the city’s beachfront boardwalk, before overturning on the lawn of the Charles Culver Garden, police in Tel Aviv said. Several pedestrians were struck.
He said a police officer at a nearby petrol station heard the commotion and rushed to the scene to see the driver of the car “trying to reach for the rifle-like object he was carrying” and Then “defused it.”
The Israeli Ambulance Service says that apart from the alleged perpetrator, the attack left a total of eight dead and all were tourists.
Of those injured, three sustained minor injuries and four suffered only minor injuries.
Writing on Twitter, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed her “deep sorrow” at Mr Prini’s death and described the attack as “cowardly”.
Following the incident, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mobilized police and army reserves as part of counter-terrorism efforts, his office said.
Mr. Netanyahu has also visited the site of the shooting in the West Bank.
The attacks came hours after the Israeli army carried out airstrikes on the bases of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
The military said the strikes were in response to 34 rockets fired from Lebanon into northern Israel on Thursday, which it blamed on the group.
Tensions are high after two nights of Israeli police raids on Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque – Islam’s third holiest site – earlier this week.
The raids sparked violent clashes with Palestinians inside the mosque and sparked outrage across the region.
Rockets fired from Lebanon created the largest such barrage in 17 years.
Hamas did not confirm that it had fired the rockets, but leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was visiting the Lebanese capital Beirut at the time, said Palestinians “will not sit down” in the face of Israeli aggression. “
