By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Two Palestinian men stole cars and ran over Israelis in a suburb of Tel Aviv on Monday, the Israeli police said. One person was killed and 17 others injured, according to emergency officials.
Both assailants, residents of the Hebron area in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, were arrested, the police said in a statement. Their motivations were still being investigated, but the incident was being treated as a terrorist attack, according to Dean Elsdunne, a spokesman for the police.
Magen David Adom, an Israeli emergency medical service, said a woman in her 70s was killed. Of the 17 people wounded, two were in serious condition, it said.
The French foreign ministry said two of those injured were young French nationals, but it gave no names or ages. “Nothing justifies terrorism,” the ministry’s statement said.
The incident, in the town of Ra’anana, came amid heightened tensions in Israel, as the war against Hamas in Gaza has entered its fourth month and as Israeli security forces have tightened restrictions on Palestinians in the West Bank.
Avi Bitton, the police commander for Israel’s central district, told reporters that the suspects had used two cars to carry out “a series of rammings.”
In a statement, Hamas offered praise for what it described as “the ‘Ra’anana’ attack,” referring to the assailants as “heroes” and calling their actions “a natural response to the occupation’s massacres and aggression against the Palestinian people.” It did not take responsibility for the incident.
The Shin Bet, Israel’s internal intelligence agency, identified the suspects as Ahmad Zidat, 25, and Mahmoud Zidat, 44. It said they were members of the same family from the village of Bani Naim, and that they were among the Palestinians who are barred from entering Israel.
Images from the scene showed emergency responders and police officers near a damaged white vehicle on a sidewalk beside a bus station.
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