Eight people were wounded early Sunday morning when a Palestinian gunman opened fire on a bus in Jerusalem’s Old City, police and medics said. The assault comes a week after conflict erupted between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
According to Israeli hospitals treating the wounded, two were in critical condition, including a pregnant lady with stomach injuries and a guy with gunshot wounds to the head and neck.
Tom Nides, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, tweeted that among the injured were American citizens. A spokeswoman for the embassy gave no more information or facts. Sunday during a news conference, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer said that three of the eight victims injured in the incident were from Brooklyn.
As the bus sat in a parking area outside David’s Tomb on Mount Zion, just outside the Old City walls, the shooting occurred. Israeli media described the alleged attacker as a Palestinian man aged 26 from east Jerusalem. According to Israeli police, investigation teams have been rushed to the location. In pursuit of the accused assailant, Israeli security forces also advanced into the adjoining Palestinian community of Silwan.
Sunday evening, authorities said that the alleged attacker handed himself in. During a Cabinet meeting on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said that the suspect was a Jerusalem resident who acted alone during the shooting and had previously been detained by Israel.
Following a week of tension between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, the assault in Jerusalem occurred.
Last weekend, Israeli warplanes launched an operation against the extremist organization Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, sparking three days of intense cross-border warfare. During the conflict, Islamic Jihad launched hundreds of rockets in retaliation for the airstrikes that killed two of its leaders and other militants. Israel said that the bombing was intended to deter the group’s vows to retaliate over the arrest of one of its leaders in the occupied West Bank.
During the violence, which was brought to a stop by an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire, 49 Palestinians, including 17 children and 14 terrorists, were murdered and hundreds were wounded. There were no Israeli fatalities or major injuries.
Controlling Gaza, the Islamic terrorist organization Hamas remained on the sidelines.
Israeli forces killed three Palestinian militants and injured scores in a battle that erupted during an arrest raid in the West Bank city of Nablus, a day after the cease-fire ended the bloodiest round of violence in Gaza in more than a year.