At least one person has died and 14 people have been injured after two explosions at bus stops in Jerusalem in what Israeli police call a suspected Palestinian attack.
One explosion occurred along a highway leading out of town that is usually packed with commuters, and a second was reported in the Ramot neighborhood north of the city 30 minutes later.
It comes amid high tensions between Israel and Palestinians after months of Israeli raids in the occupied West Bank and a series of deadly attacks on Israelis that killed 19 people.
More than 130 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli-Palestinian fighting in the West Bank and East Jerusalem this year, making 2022 the deadliest year since 2006.
The Israeli army says most of the Palestinians killed were militants. But young stone throwers protesting the incursions and others not involved in the clashes were also killed.
“It was a crazy explosion. There is damage everywhere here,” Yosef Haim Gabay, a medic who was on the scene when the first explosion occurred, told Israel’s Army Radio.
“I saw people with wounds that were bleeding everywhere.”
Israeli emergency services said four people were seriously injured in the blasts, with at least 14 injured in total.
The twin blasts happened amid the buzz of rush hour traffic and police shut down part of a major highway leading out of town, where the first blast occurred.
Video shortly after the first explosion showed debris strewn along the sidewalk as the wail of ambulances sounded.
Islamist militant Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip and once carried out suicide bombings against Israelis, praised the perpetrators of the attacks, calling them a heroic operation, but refrained from claiming responsibility.
“The occupation is reaping the price for its crimes and aggressions against our people,” Hamas spokesman Abd al-Latif al-Qanua said.
