An Italian tourist named Alessandro Parini, aged 36, was tragically killed in a suspected car-ramming attack near a beach in Tel Aviv, Israel. Seven other people were injured, including three British nationals and another Italian, according to Israeli medics. The incident occurred when a 45-year-old man drove a Kia car along the city’s beachside boardwalk, hitting pedestrians before overturning on the lawn of the Charles Clore Garden.

A police officer at a nearby petrol station intervened and neutralized the suspected attacker, who was later identified as Yousef Abu Jaber from Kafr Qasim, an Israeli-Arab city. All the casualties from the attack were tourists, and the injured suffered varying degrees of injuries.

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Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed deep sorrow at the death of Mr. Parini and condemned the attack as cowardly. Mr. Parini was a lawyer from Rome, as per Italian media reports. In response to the incident, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mobilized police and army reservists to counter terrorism and also visited the site of the shooting in the West Bank.

The attack occurred just hours after two British-Israeli sisters were killed and their mother injured in a shooting in the occupied West Bank earlier on the same day. Tensions have been high in the region due to recent Israeli police raids at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, which triggered violent confrontations with Palestinians and sparked anger across the region.

In addition, the Israeli military carried out air strikes on targets belonging to the Palestinian militant group Hamas in southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, in response to a barrage of 34 rockets fired from Lebanon into northern Israel, which the military blamed on Hamas. Hamas did not confirm the rocket attacks, but its leader, Ismail Haniyeh, stated that Palestinians would not sit idly in the face of Israeli aggression.