Media affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are lauding a car-ramming and stabbing attack against civilians in central Tel Aviv as a “martyrdom operation".

IRGC-affiliated Tasnim news agency published a video and several photos of the incident and praised the 20-year-old Palestinian assailant who was shot dead by an armed civilian as a “martyr". Hamas' official channels hailed him as their operative. 

The Palestinian from the West Bank, rammed a pickup truck into pedestrians in Tel Aviv and then went on a stabbing rampage, chasing people knife in hand and wounding eight people on Tuesday.

Hamas claimed the assassin, who entered Israel on a medical permit, struck in Israel's commercial capital in retaliation for the ongoing military raid in the flashpoint West Bank town of Jenin, in which 10 Palestinians have been killed during clashes. 

In a statement, Hamas described the attack as a “heroic operation” and “an act of self-defense in the face of the ongoing Zionist massacre in Jenin, the crimes of displacement, killing and destruction executed by occupation forces."

Israel sent drones to strike targets in a militant stronghold in Jenin early Monday and deployed hundreds of troops in the area. The attack set off a gunbattle lasting into the morning. Israeli forces have remained inside the Jenin refugee camp.

The incursion took place two days after the Islamic Jihad's Secretary-General Ziyad al-Nakhala said that anti-Israeli actions in the West Bank reflect Iranian Supreme Leader’s directives.