JERUSALEM: A gunman opened fire on a bus near Jerusalem’s Old City early Sunday, injuring eight Israelis in a suspected Palestinian attack that came a week after violence between Israel and militants in Gaza flared up, police said and doctors.
Two of the victims were in serious condition, including a pregnant woman with abdominal injuries and a man with gunshot wounds to the head and neck, according to the Israeli hospitals treating them.
The shooting occurred as the bus waited in a parking lot near the Western Wall, which is considered the holiest site where Jews can pray.
Israel Police said forces had been dispatched to the scene to investigate. Israeli security forces also entered the nearby Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan to pursue the alleged attacker.
The attack in Jerusalem follows a tense week between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Last weekend, Israeli warplanes launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip, targeting the militant group Islamic Jihad and triggering three days of heavy cross-border fighting. Islamic Jihad fired hundreds of rockets during the eruption in revenge for the airstrikes, which killed two of its commanders and other militants. Israel said the attack was aimed at thwarting the group’s threats to respond to the arrest of one of its officials in the occupied West Bank.
Forty-nine Palestinians, including 17 children and 14 militants, were killed and several hundred injured in the fighting, which ended in an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire. No Israelis were killed or seriously injured.
The Islamic militant group Hamas, which controls Gaza, remained on the sidelines.
A day after the ceasefire ended the worst round of fighting in Gaza in more than a year, Israeli troops killed three Palestinian militants and injured dozens in a firefight that broke out during an arrest raid in the West Bank city of Nablus.
Two of the victims were in serious condition, including a pregnant woman with abdominal injuries and a man with gunshot wounds to the head and neck, according to the Israeli hospitals treating them.
The shooting occurred as the bus waited in a parking lot near the Western Wall, which is considered the holiest site where Jews can pray.
Israel Police said forces had been dispatched to the scene to investigate. Israeli security forces also entered the nearby Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan to pursue the alleged attacker.
The attack in Jerusalem follows a tense week between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Last weekend, Israeli warplanes launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip, targeting the militant group Islamic Jihad and triggering three days of heavy cross-border fighting. Islamic Jihad fired hundreds of rockets during the eruption in revenge for the airstrikes, which killed two of its commanders and other militants. Israel said the attack was aimed at thwarting the group’s threats to respond to the arrest of one of its officials in the occupied West Bank.
Forty-nine Palestinians, including 17 children and 14 militants, were killed and several hundred injured in the fighting, which ended in an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire. No Israelis were killed or seriously injured.
The Islamic militant group Hamas, which controls Gaza, remained on the sidelines.
A day after the ceasefire ended the worst round of fighting in Gaza in more than a year, Israeli troops killed three Palestinian militants and injured dozens in a firefight that broke out during an arrest raid in the West Bank city of Nablus.
