Israel: 7 injured in an attack on a bus in Jerusalem

Seven people were injured, two seriously, in a gun attack on a bus early today in central Jerusalem, police and emergency services said.

“Police were informed of shots fired at a bus near David’s Tomb (…). Officers cordoned off the scene and are looking for a suspect who fled,” Israel Police said.

An AFP journalist found that a strong police force was deployed at the site, near the Wailing Wall, in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Magen David Adom (“The Red Star of David”, Israel’s emergency aid service equivalent to the Red Cross), said seven were injured, two seriously.

“There are a total of seven wounded, all of them conscious, one woman and six men, two of whom are in a serious condition, in the terrorist attack in the Old City of Jerusalem,” said Zaki Heller, a spokesman for Magen David Adom.

“We arrived very quickly on the scene. On Maale Hassalom street (…) we were called by passing by to go and offer care to two men aged about 30 who had been injured inside the bus. They were conscious and could walk” while carrying injuries ” in the upper body,” two Magen David Adom paramedics said, according to the aid and care organization.

“The whole world panicked”

“I was coming back from the Wall of Tears. The bus was full of passengers. I stopped at the bus stop at David’s Tomb. That’s when the shooting started,” bus driver Daniel Kaniewski told a small group of reporters at the scene.

“I saw two people bleeding inside the bus. The whole world panicked,” he added in front of his bullet-riddled bus.

In the spring, 19 people—mostly Israeli citizens inside Israel—were killed, mostly in Palestinian attacks. Three Israeli Arab attackers were also killed.

In response, the Israeli authorities multiplied military operations in the occupied West Bank. Over fifty Palestinians, members of armed organizations and civilians, were killed in these operations.

Last week, the Israeli military launched a “preemptive operation” against the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an armed Islamist group, in the Gaza Strip. The group retaliated by firing rockets at Israel.

At least 49 Palestinians, fighters of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad as well as many children, were killed last weekend in this escalation, which however ended last Sunday, after a ceasefire agreement brokered by Egypt.

Source: AMPE