JERUSALEM (AP) – A gunman opened fire on a bus near Jerusalem’s Old City early Sunday, wounding eight Israelis in a suspected Palestinian attack that came a week after violence flared between Israel and militants in Gaza, police said. and the doctors.
Two of the victims were in serious condition, including a pregnant woman with abdominal wounds and a man with gunshot wounds to the head and neck, according to Israeli hospitals treating them.
The shooting occurred as the bus waited in a parking lot near the Western Wall, considered the holiest site where Jews can pray.
Israeli police said forces were sent to the scene to investigate. Israeli security forces also pushed into the nearby Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in pursuit of the suspected attacker.
The attack in Jerusalem followed a tense week between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Last weekend, Israeli warplanes launched an attack on the Gaza Strip targeting the Islamic Jihad militant group, sparking three days of fierce cross-border fighting. Islamic Jihad fired hundreds of rockets during the resurgence in retaliation for the airstrikes, which killed two of its commanders and other fighters. Israel said the attack was intended to prevent the group from threatening 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 wounded in the fighting, which ended with 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 a ceasefire halted the worst round of clashes in Gaza in more than a year, Israeli troops killed three Palestinian militants and wounded dozens in a shootout that erupted during an arrest raid in the West Bank city of Nablus.
