Eight people were injured, two seriously, in an armed attack on a bus early Sunday in Jerusalem, Israeli police and paramedics said.
“The police have been informed of a shooting against a bus near the Tomb of David … the police have cordoned off the place and are looking for a suspect who fled,” the police said before announcing that a man had been arrested.
“The terrorist is in our hands,” police spokesman Eli Levy told Kan public radio.
A pregnant woman gave birth in an emergency
The Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross, said it intervened after receiving reports of shootings on a bus in Jerusalem.
His spokesman Zaki Heller reported seven injuries, “all conscious, one woman and six men, two of whom are in serious condition” and police reported eight injuries according to a latest report.
The spokesman for Shaarei Tsedek Hospital in Jerusalem said medical teams had to perform a caesarean section on a pregnant woman injured in the attack. “She remains intubated and in serious condition. The baby was born and is in stable condition,” she said.
“Everyone was in a panic”
“Anyone who wants to harm us must know that they will pay the price for any harm to our civilians,” Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said in a statement on Sunday.
For its part, the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, described it as a “heroic operation” without formally claiming it. “Our people will continue to resist and fight the occupier with all means,” Hamas said in a statement.
“I was coming back from the Western Wall. The bus was full of passengers. I stopped at the David’s Tomb bus stop. At that moment the shooting started,” bus driver Daniel Kanevsky testified.
“I saw two people bleeding on the bus. Everyone was in a panic,” he added, standing in front of his bullet-riddled bus at the foot of Jerusalem’s Old City.
Multiplication of Israeli operations in the West Bank
By spring, 19 people, mostly Israeli civilians, had been killed, mostly in attacks by Palestinians. Three Israeli Arab attackers were also killed.
In the process, the Israeli authorities stepped up operations in the occupied West Bank. More than 50 Palestinians have been killed, including combatants and civilians, in operations and incidents in the West Bank.
Last week, the Israeli army carried out a “preemptive operation” against Islamic Jihad, an armed Islamist movement in the Gaza Strip, which responded with rocket fire into Israel.
At least 49 Palestinians, including Islamic Jihad fighters but also children, were killed in this weekend of military escalation that ended last Sunday with a truce brokered by Egypt.
Source: BFM TV
