The assailant was neutralized by security forces after opening fire in Neve Yaacov, a Jewish settlement neighborhood in East Jerusalem.
At least seven Israelis died and three were injured Friday night in a terror attack outside a synagogue in Neeve Yakov, a Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem, the Arab part of the city. Among the injured, a 70-year-old woman in serious condition, a 20-year-old man and a 14-year-old boy.
The police announced that they had shot the shooter, who would have posted himself in front of the synagogue around 8:15 p.m., waiting for the faithful who were there to leave, after the prayer marking the beginning of the Shabbat. He then allegedly tried to leave the scene and was intercepted a few hundred meters away by the police, who shot him dead as he was shooting at her. Doron Turgeman, the Jerusalem district commander, said the killer is a 21-year-old resident of Beit Hanina, a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem. On Friday evening, Neeve Yaakov’s neighborhood was cordoned off by the police. 42 people were arrested, including some family members of the suspect, police said the next morning. Others live in her neighborhood in East Jerusalem, she added. In a separate statement, the police said the Israeli forces had been placed in a state of “highest alert“.
‘Appalling’ attack
This attack comes the day after an operation by the Israeli army, Thursday morning in Jenin, in the north of the occupied West Bank, which left nine dead. Spokespersons for Hamas and Islamic Jihad jointly welcomed the attack, “a heroic action in revenge for the Jenin massacre.The attack was celebrated across the West Bank, Gaza and Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem.
In Jenin, in a courtyard where relatives of one of the victims of Thursday morning’s attack commemorated his memory, a video shows how mourning turned into celebration. Hundreds of young people also took to the streets of Jenin and Nablus to celebrate the attack. In Gaza, mosque loudspeakers announced the attack, hailing it with the cry of “God is great“. Machine gun bursts were fired skyward. In Shuafat, an Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem, Palestinians handed out pastries to passers-by.
Thursday’s Israeli operation in Jenin is one of the deadliest recorded by the United Nations since 2005. Since the beginning of January, the number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli army has risen to 30. In 2022, they were 144, making it the bloodiest year since the end of the second intifada. This escalation of tensions in the West Bank is taking place as the Palestinian Authority there is increasingly discredited. On Thursday, its president, Mahmoud Abbas, announced the end of security cooperation with Israel. During the night of Thursday to Friday, six rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip. Four of them were intercepted by the “Iron Dome“, the other two fell without causing any casualties. The Israeli army then bombarded two Hamas military sites, causing no casualties.
On Friday evening, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres “firmly” condemned the attack, “particularly abject” on this day of Holocaust remembrance, his spokesperson said in a statement. France has denounced a “appalling terrorist attack”. The United States also condemned the attack “appallingof the synagogue. Joe Biden called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to assure him of US support in what the US president called a“attack on the civilized world”. Monday and Tuesday, the head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, is expected in Jerusalem and Ramallah. He must mentionthe measures to be taken for a de-escalation of tensions.»
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