A Palestinian gunman opened fire in east Jerusalem on Saturday, a day after another attacker killed seven people outside a synagogue and wounded at least two others in the city’s deadliest attack since 2008.
Paramedics said at least two people, aged 23 and 47, were wounded in the shooting near Jerusalem’s historic Old City. Medics said he was fully conscious at the hospital and in moderate to serious condition. There was no immediate word on the condition of the attacker.
It marked one of the bloodiest months in Israel and the latest major escalation in the occupied West Bank in several years. On Friday, a Palestinian gunman killed at least seven people outside an East Jerusalem synagogue, including a 70-year-old woman.
Israeli police launched a security crackdown early Saturday following the attack near the synagogue.
They entered the gunman’s At-Tur neighborhood in East Jerusalem and arrested 42 of his family members, neighbors and others for questioning. The statement said police chief Kobi Shabtai has tightened security forces and instructed police to work 12-hour shifts, urging the public to call a hotline if they see anything suspicious. Do it.
The first Friday attack, which occurred while residents were observing the Jewish Sabbath, came a day after an Israeli military raid killed nine Palestinians in the West Bank. Friday’s shooting sparked celebrations in both the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, where people fired guns into the air, blew horns and distributed sweets.
The explosion of violence, which also included a rocket barrage from Gaza and retaliatory Israeli airstrikes, has presented an early challenge to Israel’s new government, dominated by ultranationalists who have railed hard against Palestinian violence. It also overshadowed a visit by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the region on Sunday.
Addressing reporters at Israel’s National Police headquarters, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had conducted a security assessment and decided to take “immediate action”. He said he would convene a meeting of his security cabinet on Saturday night, after the end of the Sabbath, to discuss a further response.
Netanyahu declined to elaborate, but said Israel would act with “determination and restraint”. He appealed to the public not to take law into their hands.
