Israel Starts Calling Up Reservists after Deadly Attacks

Israeli police gather next to an overturned car at the site of an attack in Tel Aviv on April 7, 2023. (AFP)
Israeli police gather next to an overturned car at the site of an attack in Tel Aviv on April 7, 2023. (AFP)
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Israel Starts Calling Up Reservists after Deadly Attacks

Israeli police gather next to an overturned car at the site of an attack in Tel Aviv on April 7, 2023. (AFP)
Israeli police gather next to an overturned car at the site of an attack in Tel Aviv on April 7, 2023. (AFP)

Israel began calling up police and army reservists Saturday 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 Israeli police clashed with Palestinians inside Jerusalem's flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque on Wednesday, with Israel bombarding both Gaza and Lebanon in response to rocket fire by Palestinian militants.

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.

"The terrorist was neutralized," a spokesman told AFP.

Palestinian movement Hamas, which rules Gaza, said the attack was a "natural and legitimate response" to Israel's "aggression" in the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

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.

The army said it had launched a manhunt for the perpetrators.

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

Police said four reserve battalions of border police would be deployed in city centers from Sunday, 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.

Cross-border strikes

Friday's attacks came after Israel launched air strikes and an artillery bombardment before dawn in response to rocket fire from the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.

It was the heaviest rocket fire from Lebanon since Israel fought a 34-day war with Iran-backed Hezbollah party in 2006 and the first time Israel has confirmed an attack on Lebanese territory since April 2022.

Israel "struck targets, including terror infrastructures, belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization in southern Lebanon", the army said.

The Lebanese army said it had found and dismantled a multiple rocket launcher in an olive grove in the Marjeyoun area near the border, still loaded with six primed rockets.

In Gaza, the Israeli army said it had hit two tunnels and "two weapon manufacturing sites" in response to the "security violations of Hamas".

It said air defenses had intercepted 25 rockets from Lebanon on Thursday, while five had hit Israeli territory.

Israel "will not allow the Hamas terrorist organization to operate from within Lebanon", it said.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which patrols the area along the border, urged restraint, noting: "Both sides have said they do not want a war."

On Friday evening, the army said it had shot down a drone that had entered Israel's airspace from Lebanon.

Mosque raid

On Wednesday, Israeli riot police stormed the prayer hall of Al-Aqsa Mosque in a pre-dawn raid, aiming to dislodge "law-breaking youths and masked agitators" they said had barricaded themselves inside.

Ramadan coincided with the Jewish Passover holiday this year raising tensions with the tens of thousands of Palestinians who pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque during the Muslim fasting month.

The Palestinians fear Netanyahu´s hard-right government may change longstanding rules that allow Jews to visit but not pray in the mosque compound, despite his repeated denials.

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.

Qatar -- which has acted as a broker in previous understandings between Israel and Hamas -- "is working to deescalate the situation on all sides," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.



Amnesty Accuses Israel of 'Live-streamed Genocide' against Gaza Palestinians

TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
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Amnesty Accuses Israel of 'Live-streamed Genocide' against Gaza Palestinians

TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Israel of committing a "live-streamed genocide" against Palestinians in Gaza by forcibly displacing most of the population and deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe.

In its annual report, Amnesty charged that Israel had acted with "specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide".

Israel has rejected accusations of "genocide" from Amnesty, other rights groups and some states in its war in Gaza.

The conflict erupted after the Palestinian group Hamas's deadly October 7, 2023 attacks inside Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Hamas also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel in response launched a relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip and a ground operation that according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory has left at least 52,243 dead.

"Since 7 October 2023, when Hamas perpetrated horrific crimes against Israeli citizens and others and captured more than 250 hostages, the world has been made audience to a live-streamed genocide," Amnesty's secretary general Agnes Callamard said in the introduction to the report.

"States watched on as if powerless, as Israel killed thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, wiping out entire multigenerational families, destroying homes, livelihoods, hospitals and schools," she added.

'Extreme levels of suffering'

Gaza's civil defense agency said early Tuesday that four people were killed and others injured in an Israeli air strike on displaced persons' tents near the Al-Iqleem area in Southern Gaza.

The agency earlier warned fuel shortages meant it had been forced to suspend eight out of 12 emergency vehicles in Southern Gaza, including ambulances.

The lack of fuel "threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens and displaced persons in shelter centers," it said in a statement.

Amnesty's report said the Israeli campaign had left most of the Palestinians of Gaza "displaced, homeless, hungry, at risk of life-threatening diseases and unable to access medical care, power or clean water".

Amnesty said that throughout 2024 it had "documented multiple war crimes by Israel, including direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks".

It said Israel's actions forcibly displaced 1.9 million Palestinians, around 90 percent of Gaza's population, and "deliberately engineered an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe".

Even as protesters hit the streets in Western capitals, "the world's governments individually and multilaterally failed repeatedly to take meaningful action to end the atrocities and were slow even in calling for a ceasefire".

Meanwhile, Amnesty also sounded alarm over Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank, and repeated an accusation that Israel was employing a system of "apartheid".

"Israel's system of apartheid became increasingly violent in the occupied West Bank, marked by a sharp increase in unlawful killings and state-backed attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian civilians," it said.

Heba Morayef, Amnesty director for the Middle East and North Africa region, denounced "the extreme levels of suffering that Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to endure on a daily basis over the past year" as well as "the world's complete inability or lack of political will to put a stop to it".