Violence in Tel Aviv leaves at least one dead and five injured

At least one person has died and five have been injured in an attack in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv, the latest episode of violence after several days of rising tensions sparked fears of a broader conflagration in the region.

It was not immediately clear if there had been one incident, or two separate ones.

Israeli media reported that the assailant was an Arab citizen of Israel, from the northern town of Kafr Qasem, and that all of the injured were Italian and British nationals. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, ordered the mobilisation of police and army reserves after the incident, his office said in a statement.

Video of the incident shared on social media showed that the car had veered off the street and onto path before flipping over over onto the beach.

The attack comes against a backdrop of fears of escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict drawing in the powerful Lebanese militant group Hezbollah after Israel bombed sites in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon early on Friday in response to rocket fire blamed on Palestinian militants from the two territories.

The situation along the borders appeared to have calmed by dawn, and the lack of casualties in the frontier standoffs also suggested that no side wanted to risk further hostilities.

But a shooting attack in the West Bank which killed two British-Israeli sisters and critically injured their mother a few hours later, the shooting down of a drone that entered Israeli territory from Lebanon, and the attack in Tel Aviv suggested that wider escalation is still a substantial threat.

The militant group has vowed to strike back, but, like Hamas, is wary of an escalation. The violence at al-Aqsa may have offered a pretext for retaliation. Although Israel said Hamas was behind the attack from Lebanon, it is widely believed that Hezbollah must have greenlighted the move.

Netanyahu publicly fired his defence minister two weeks ago for voicing opposition to the judicial overhaul, but he appears to have remained in post.