The palestinian during his detention Seven people were wounded early Monday when a Palestinian crashed a stolen taxi into a group of border guards outside a Tel Aviv nightclub, then attacked them with a knife, police said. Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said the attacker stole a taxi in the south of the city just before 2am on Sunday, stabbed the driver and then drove into a checkpoint near a popular nightclub.
“At 1:40 am (2240 GMT) the attacker, a young man of 20 from (the northern West Bank city of) Nablus, stole a taxi in Tel Aviv,” Samri told AFP, saying the taxi driver had been lightly wounded in the hand when he was dragged out of his car.
“He then rammed a group of border police who were standing in front of HaOman 17, injuring two of them,” she said.
“Then he got out of the car and attacked passers-by and the border guards with a knife, injuring another four people ? two of them border guards ? while shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is greatest),” she added.
The attacker was subdued, sustaining light injuries in the process, and was taken to hospital where he was interrogated by the Shin Bet internal security agency, she said.
“The police have been in a state of very high alert and have increased the number of patrols across the country since the attacks north of Eilat,” she said, referring to a series of attacks by gunmen on August 18 which killed eight Israelis on a desert road near the Red Sea resort town.
One of the injured was said to be in a critical condition.
Criminal incidents are frequent in Tel Aviv. Police have also been on the alert for possible attacks inside Israel after heightened tension along Israel\'s borders with the Palestinian Gaza Strip and Egypt in the past 10 days. The Palestinian Authority Monday condemned this attack as well as the ongoing Israeli aggression against Palestinians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, and reaffirmed its intention to seek membership and recognition of a Palestinian state within 1967 borders and with Jerusalem as its capital in the United Nations.
It said that “no attempts to divert attention will stop us from achieving our goal.”