A truck veered off course at a busy junction in Tel Aviv and ran into a bus stop, killing one person and injuring around 40 others on Sunday. Israeli police suspect it is a terrorist attack and are investigating the motives of the driver.
The incident occurred at about 10 am local time, or 0800 GMT, close to the Glilot military base: according to eyewitnesses, a truck driver, an Israeli citizen who drove southward, lost control and crashed both into the bus stop and people who were standing in it. An armed civilian in the vicinity responded with fire, reportedly neutralizing the driver.
Some of the injured are in serious condition. The paramedics quickly took the injured to various hospitals, one of which was Ichilov Medical Center in Tel Aviv, where one of the victims died from her injuries. According to police, eight of the injured, both civilians and soldiers, were treated at Sheba Medical Center. Local media named the driver an Israeli Arab from Qalansawe, a town in central Israel.
Later, the Iran-backed terror group Hamas hailed the “heroic ramming attack,” mentioning that the location is near “Mossad headquarters.” Glilot hosts Mossad headquarters and several units from the IDF intelligence branch, including the famous signals intelligence Unit 8200-a, a highly important unit in national security and cyber intelligence.
Hamas characterized the attack as a “natural response to the crimes of the Zionist occupation against our Palestinian people in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem,” in a statement referring to ongoing violence, particularly in northern Gaza. The group, however, did not claim responsibility for the attack.
