Israeli police announced on Sunday that a suspect was arrested in a gun attack on a bus near Jerusalem’s Old City that injured eight women, two seriously and one pregnant.
“The terrorist is in our hands,” police spokesman Kan Eli Levy told public radio hours after the attack, which took place early Sunday near David’s Tomb, a holy place for Jews, Christians and Muslims.
“This is a lone assailant, a city resident with a criminal record,” Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said at a cabinet meeting.
“Anyone who wants to harm us should know that they will pay for the damage done to our civilians,” the statement said.
The Israeli counterpart to the Red Cross, Magen David Adom, intervened after receiving news of gunfire on a bus in Jerusalem.
His spokesman, Zaki Heller, reported that there were seven injuries, including “six men, all conscious, one woman and two seriously.”
Police said eight people were injured, according to the latest figures.
“We can confirm that American citizens are among the victims,” a spokesman for the US embassy in Jerusalem told AFP.
At Shaarei Tsedek Hospital in Jerusalem, medical staff had to perform a cesarean section on a pregnant woman injured in the attack.
“He is intubated and in a serious condition. The child was born and is stable,” a hospital spokesperson told AFP.
Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip, hailed a “heroic operation” without formally claiming it.
Hamas said in a statement, “Our people will continue to resist and fight in every way against the occupier.”
‘Everyone is in panic’
“I was returning from the Wailing Wall. The bus was full of passengers. I stopped at the Tomb of David stop. That’s when the shooting started,” bus driver Daniel Kanievsky told a small group of reporters at the scene.
“I saw two people covered in blood on the bus. Everyone was in a state of panic,” he added, as he stood in front of his bullet-hole bus near Jerusalem’s Old City.
Recently, 19 people, mostly Israeli civilians, were killed in attacks, mostly Palestinians. Three Israeli Arab attackers were also killed.
In this context, Israeli authorities intensified their operations in the occupied West Bank. More than 50 Palestinians, including fighters and civilians, have been killed in operations and incidents in the West Bank.
And last week, the Israeli military conducted a “preemptive operation” in the Gaza Strip against Islamic Jihad, an armed Islamist movement that responded to Israel with rocket salvos.
At least 49 Palestinians, including civilians and children, as well as Islamic Jihad fighters, were killed during this three-day military tension, which ended with a ceasefire on 7 August, mediated by Egypt.
source: Noticias
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