Seven people were killed in a shooting at a synagogue in East Jerusalem. This is the deadliest act of its kind in years. At least 3 more people were hurt.
On Saturday, two people were hurt in separate shootings in the City of David neighborhood of Jerusalem, according to police and emergency services. Both people, one in his twenties and the other in his forties or fifties, were taken to the trauma section of the Shaare Zedek Medical Center.
In a statement, the police said that “a large police force was sent to the scene” and that “the shooting suspect was neutralized.” According to a preliminary report from the Jerusalem police, the incident is being looked into as a possible terrorist attack.
The shooter from Friday’s attack, which police commissioner Yaakov Shabtai called “one of the worst terror acts in the past few years,” was also reportedly killed by police later on.
Authorities also said that they knew seven people were killed and that three others were hurt in different ways.
Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel’s emergency rescue service, said that five people who had been shot were dead at the scene. Other people who died were a man and a woman who were both found dead in hospitals after one of the five people who were taken there died there.
The MDA says that one of the people hurt is a 15-year-old boy.
A police report says that the attack took place around 8:15 p.m. local time on Neve Yaakov Street, which is close to a synagogue.
Shabtai says that the shooter “started shooting at anyone who got in his way.” He then got back in his car and started shooting people close up with a pistol. He is said to have left the area in a car before police shot and killed him.
Police named the shooter as a 21-year-old man from East Jerusalem and said in a statement that he seemed to have done it alone. In 1967, Israel took over the East Side of Jerusalem, which is a stronghold for the Palestinians.
On Friday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned against taking retribution. I’m begging you not to break the law. For this purpose, there is a military, a police force, and a security force. He said, “They are acting and will keep acting in line with cabinet orders.”
CNN says that this happens one day after the worst day for Palestinians in the West Bank in more than a year.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said that Israeli forces killed nine Palestinians in the West Bank city of Jenin on Thursday. This caused the Palestinian Authority to stop working with Israel on security. That day, a tenth Palestinian was killed near Jerusalem in what Israeli police called a “violent disturbance.”
Overnight, rockets were fired at Israel, so early Friday morning, Israeli planes started bombing the Gaza Strip.
Itamar Ben Gvir, an unpopular Israeli minister, went to the scene of the incident on Friday night. He told the crowd, which was yelling loudly, that “it can’t go on like this.”
“I can confirm that you are right,” he said to the crowd that was yelling. The can has to be carried. Ben Gvir, who is the leader of the far-right Jewish Power party, has said that the situation must change.
Several people who were at the event started cheering Ben Gvir on by shouting, “You are our voice, we support you!”
Hadas Gold and his team were in the mostly Palestinian neighborhood of Beit Hanina on Friday night when they heard what sounded like gunshots and car horns going off in celebration.
In a statement sent Friday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the attack on a Jerusalem synagogue a “heinous act of terrorism” and said that the United States would “fully support” Israel.
The United States Department of State also “strongly condemned” the “possible terrorist attack” in Jerusalem.
Deputy Spokesman for the State Department, Vedant Patel, said that the situation was “simply awful.” We’re sad for the people who died in this senseless act of violence, along with their families and friends.
Patel said that Secretary of State Antony Blinken would travel as planned to Egypt, Israel, and the West Bank.
Also, the European Union, France, and the United Kingdom all strongly condemned the shooting in public statements.
I can’t believe that tonight there was a terrible attack in Neve Yaakov. Attacking people at a synagogue on the day before Shabbat is a particularly horrible act of terrorism. Neil Wigan, who is the British ambassador to Israel, said on Twitter that the UK backs Israel.
The EU’s ambassador to Israel, Dimiter Tzantchev, tweeted in response to the “senseless bloodshed” that “terror is never the answer.”
On Twitter, the French embassy in Israel said that the attack was even worse because it happened on a day when people around the world remember the Holocaust.
The spokesman for the Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres said that he, too, was horrified by the terrible attack on Friday.
And on the day we remembered the Holocaust, he said, “It’s especially awful that the attack happened in a place of worship.”
Guterres told everyone to “exercise extreme restraint” because he was worried about the rise in violence in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
Rosy