Woman stabbed in Israel, attacker killed: police, medics

An attacker stabbed an 18-year-old woman near the Israeli city of Tel Aviv on Friday, police and paramedics said, adding that she was taken to hospital in a serious condition.

The attacker was killed, the police and Israel's Magen David Adom emergency medical service said, without giving details.

On his way back from addressing journalists at the scene in the city of Ramla, Israel's far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir was involved in a spectacular car crash in which three people were lightly injured, police said.

An AFP photographer on the scene saw two damaged cars. One was overturned and Israeli media reported Ben Gvir had been travelling in this vehicle.

Police said the traffic department was investigating an "accident in Ramla involving two vehicles, including the vehicle of the Minister of National Security."

"Three individuals were lightly injured and evacuated to the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center," police said.

Ben Gvir had been holding a press conference at the scene of the stabbing, saying a civilian man had killed the attacker and claiming that "weapons save lives".

"I was moved when I found out that the civilian got his gun four months ago as part of the gun reform that I advanced," he had said.

An AFP photographer at the scene of the stabbing saw a body bag and a large number of police officers.

A spokesperson for Magen David Adom said the medical service was alerted to the stabbing in Harduf Street at around 4:20 pm (1320 GMT).

Medics treated the "18-year-old conscious female in serious condition with a stab wound to her upper body" and took her to hospital, the spokesperson said.

There has been a series of deadly knife attacks across Israel and the occupied West Bank since the war in Gaza was sparked by the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.

Some 1,170 people -- mostly civilians -- were killed in the unprecedented Hamas attack in Israel, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory campaign has so far killed at least 34,356 people, mostly women and children, per the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.