by Nidal al-Mughrabi and Henriette Chacar
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A Palestinian opened fire at a synagogue near Jerusalem on Friday, killing seven and wounding three, police said, in an attack that raised fears of further bloodshed in the area a day after a particularly Israeli assault. murderer in the West Bank.
The assailant arrived around 8:15 p.m., hitting several people with bullets. He managed to flee before being caught and killed by the police, police said.
The shooting, described as a “terrorist attack” by investigators, took place in a synagogue in Neve Ya’akov, in territory occupied and then annexed by Israel after the Six-Day War in 1967.
It occurred during the prayers at the beginning of Shabbat and the international day dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust.
The attack, hailed in the Palestinian territories, raises fears of a new plunge in the region into violence following the death of nine Palestinians, including two civilians, in a clash with Israeli forces in Jenin.
The attack was not immediately claimed, but a Hamas spokesman linked the two events.
“This operation is a response to the crime carried out by the occupation forces in Jenin and a natural response to the criminal actions of the occupation,” Palestinian Islamist movement spokesman Hazem Qassem said in Gaza.
The Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian armed group, also welcomed this action without claiming paternity.
In a statement, Israeli police said the assailant was a 21-year-old Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem.
In Ramallah and Gaza, groups of residents gathered spontaneously to celebrate the attack, firing shots into the air. Outside Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, where some of the wounded were admitted, a crowd chanted “Death to terrorists”.
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of an ultra-nationalist party in Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government, the most right-wing in Israel’s history, visited the site of the attack, where he was both applauded and booed.
Sign of a possible escalation, three Palestinians were hospitalized after being wounded by bullets in Nablus, in the north of the West Bank. The identity of the assailant could not immediately be determined.
The US State Department quickly condemned the shooting, adding that it did not expect to see any change in the schedule of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is due to visit Egypt, Israel and the West Bank next week.
This visit promises to take place in a very tense context. After the assault on Jenin, rockets were fired at Israel, and the Israeli air force carried out retaliatory strikes on targets in the Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian Authority has decided to end security coordination with Israel in the West Bank after the Jenin attack.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is “deeply concerned” about the current spiral of violence, his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said.
France, in a press release from the Quai d’Orsay, condemned an “appalling terrorist attack” and called on “all parties to avoid actions likely to fuel the spiral of violence”.
(Report Henriette Chacar, French version Jean-Stéphane Brosse)