Tel Aviv | Israeli police are investigating an episode in which a driver rammed his car into people at a highway bus stop, wounding at least eight Thursday in what authorities believed was a militant attack.

Police said they had “neutralised” the suspect, who they described as a 53-year-old Palestinian from the northern West Bank who lived in Israel and was married to an Israeli citizen.

Medical workers said the ramming injured at least eight people, two in serious condition, who they evacuated to the hospital.

Paramedic Avi Cohen described a chaotic aftermath at the scene in Pardes Hanna-Karkur, a town south of the coastal city of Haifa.

“When we arrived, they were lying on the ground. We immediately began providing medical treatment to all the injured, including stopping bleeding and bandaging wounds,” he said in a statement from Magen David Adom, Israel's emergency rescue service.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, violence by militant attackers against Israelis has risen, as deadly Israeli military operations have ramped up and attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank have climbed.

Hamas congratulated the attack as “a message of defiance” but did not claim responsibility.