Stabbing and Ramming Attack in Tel Aviv

tunnel and a cache of weapons.

Israeli forces gained control of the al-Ansari mosque on Monday afternoon, following a shootout with Palestinian gunmen in the area, during the course of a major counterterrorism operation against the Jenin refugee camp.

The IDF said it carried out a drone strike against the armed Palestinians outside the mosque and later managed to break in.

On the ground floor, troops found two tunnel openings that the army said were connected. Explosives, weapons, and other military equipment were found inside the holes and scattered across the mosque.

On a sunny Tuesday afternoon, a Palestinian terrorist rammed his pickup truck into people on a bus stop on Pinchas Rosen Street in Tel Aviv. After hurting pedestrians, he then leaped out of his car and proceeded to stab people. Thankfully, he was stopped by an armed civilian, who shot at the terrorist and kicked his knife away.

Police spokesman Eli Levy said the incident was a terror attack.

Seven people were wounded in the attack. Four of the victims were listed in serious and moderate-to-serious condition.

The Shin Bet security agency said the terrorist who carried out the attack did not have an entry permit to Israel. He was named as Abed al-Wahab Khalaila, 20, from the West Bank town of as-Samu, in the South Hebron Hills area.

The Hamas terror group said Khalaila was a member of the terror group but it did not claim responsibility for the attack.

On Monday, in another suspected terror attack, a Palestinian teenager stabbed and lightly hurt an Israeli man in Bnei Brak.

IDF Takes on Jenin

“All of this excavation work in the mosque has turned it into a fortified site,” said Lt. Col. “Mem,” the commander of the elite Egoz unit, who can only be identified by his rank and initial of his first name in Hebrew.

The equipment was seized, the weapons were destroyed, and the tunnel was rendered inoperable, the IDF said.

Israel launched the major operation early Monday to crack down on what it says is a hotbed of terror in the city. A number of attacks on Israelis in recent years have been carried out by Palestinians from the area, and observers say the Palestinian Authority has little control on the ground.

The IDF’s operation has focused on a local wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group known as the Jenin Battalion, as well as other smaller armed groups in the city and refugee camp.

Over 1,000 IDF troops were involved in the campaign, which appeared to be the largest in the West Bank in some 20 years. At least 120 Palestinians had been taken in for questioning, although many had been released within a few hours.

The IDF believes there were more than 300 Palestinian gunmen in the Jenin refugee camp. IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the military had intelligence on the identities of at least 160 armed Palestinians.

During the military campaign, Israel hit Jenin with a series of airstrikes on certain targets in the city, including a war room shared by various groups in the city. The IDF located and demolished weapon storage sites, explosives labs with hundreds of primed devices, war rooms used by Palestinian gunmen to observe Israeli forces, and other “terror infrastructure.”

On Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces said that Palestinian gunmen in Jenin had turned a mosque into a “fortified” hideout, complete with an underground

Although there was no official name for the operation, the military has been said to be calling it “Bayit Vegan.”