Israel starts calling up reservists after deadly attacks in Jerusalem

TDT | Agencies                                  

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com     

Israel began calling up police and army reservists yesterday after separate attacks killed three people, including an Italian tourist, in Tel Aviv and the occupied West Bank.

Despite appeals for restraint, violence has surged since clashes inside Jerusalem's flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque on Wednesday, with Israel bombarding both Gaza and Lebanon in response to rocket fire, reports AFP.

The Italian was killed and seven other tourists wounded when an Israeli Arab ploughed a car into pedestrians on the Tel Aviv seafront on Friday evening and flipped over before being shot dead, police and emergency services said.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni named the dead man as Alessandro Parini, 36. Police identified the driver as a 45-year-old from the Arab town of Kfar Kassem in central Israel.

Earlier Friday, two British-Israeli sisters aged 16 and 20 were killed, and their mother seriously wounded when their car was fired on in the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank.

Following the Tel Aviv attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed the police to "mobilise all reserve border police units" and directed the army to "mobilise additional forces", his office said.

Police said four reserve battalions of border police would be deployed in city centres from today, in addition to units already deployed in the Jerusalem region and in the central city of Lod, which has a mixed population of Jews and Arabs.

In the West Bank, Israeli troops came under fire in a drive-by shooting in the northern town of Yabad overnight, the army said on Saturday.

One hit was identified among the assailants, an army statement said.

The upsurge of violence drew condemnation from the European Union and the United States.

"The targeting of innocent civilians of any nationality is unconscionable," said State Department spokesman Vedant Patel.

"The European Union expresses its total condemnation of these acts of violence," said its foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

A Qatari official said Doha was mediating between Israel and the Palestinians.