Israeli police announced on Sunday the arrest of a suspect in the armed robbery of a bus near the Old City of Jerusalem, which left eight injured, two seriously and a pregnant woman. “The terrorist is in our hands,” police spokesman Kan Eli Levy told public radio hours after the attack early Sunday near David’s Tomb, a holy site for Jews, Christians and Muslims. “He is a lone assailant, a city dweller with a criminal record,” Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said during his cabinet meeting. “Anyone who wants to harm us should know that they will pay the price for any harm to our civilians,” he said in a statement earlier.
Americans among the victims
The Magen David Adom, Israel’s equivalent of the Red Cross, intervened after receiving reports of shootings at a bus in Jerusalem. His spokesman, Zaki Heller, reported seven injuries, “all conscious, one woman and six men, two of whom are in serious condition”. The police reported eight injuries, according to a latest report. “We can confirm that American citizens are among the victims,” a spokesman for the US Embassy in Jerusalem told AFP, adding “to gather more information”. At Shaarei Tsedek Hospital in Jerusalem, medical teams had to perform a caesarean section on a pregnant woman injured in the attack.
“She remains intubated and in serious condition. The infant was born and is in stable condition,” the hospital spokesman told AFP. For its part, the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, hailed a “heroic operation” without formally claiming it. “Our people will continue to resist and fight the occupier by all means,” Hamas said in a statement.
“Everyone was panicking”
“I was coming back from the Wailing Wall. The bus was full of passengers. I stopped at the David’s Tomb bus stop. At that moment the shooting started,” said the bus driver, Daniel Kanievsky, to a small group of journalists on site, including the AFP. “I saw two people on the bus bleeding. Everyone was panicking,” he added, standing in front of his bullet-riddled bus at the foot of Jerusalem’s Old City. By spring, 19 people — mostly Israeli civilians — had been killed, mostly in attacks by Palestinians. Three Israeli Arab attackers were also killed.
In the process, the Israeli authorities increased operations in the occupied West Bank. More than 50 Palestinians had been killed, including combatants and civilians, in operations and incidents in the West Bank. Last week, the Israeli army carried out a “preventive operation” against the Islamic Jihad, an armed Islamist movement in the Gaza Strip, which responded with salvoes of rockets against Israel. At least 49 Palestinians, including Islamic Jihad fighters but also civilians and children, died during this three-day military escalation, which ended in a truce on August 7, favored by the mediation of Egypt.