Associated Press Published Saturday, August 13, 2022 9:47 PM EDT Last Updated Saturday, August 13, 2022 10:21 PM EDT
JERUSALEM (AP) – A gunman opened fire on a bus near Jerusalem’s Old City early Sunday, wounding eight Israelis in a suspected Palestinian attack that came a week after violence erupted between Israel and militants in Gaza, police and medics said.
Two of the victims were in serious condition, including a pregnant woman with abdominal injuries and a man with gunshot wounds to the head and neck, according to Israeli hospitals treating them.
The shooting happened while the bus was waiting in a parking lot near the Western Wall, considered the holiest place where Jews can pray.
Israeli police said a force had been dispatched to the scene to investigate. Israeli security forces also raided the nearby Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, chasing the suspected attacker.
The attack in Jerusalem followed a tense week between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Last weekend, the Israeli air force launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip targeting the Islamic Jihad militant group and set off three days of fierce cross-border fighting. Islamic Jihad fired hundreds of rockets during the outbreak to avenge airstrikes that killed two of its commanders and other fighters. Israel said the attack was aimed at thwarting threats by the group to respond to the arrest of one of its operatives in the occupied West Bank.
Forty-nine Palestinians, including 17 children and 14 fighters, were killed and several hundred wounded in the fighting, which ended in an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire. No Israelis were killed or seriously injured.
The Islamist militant group Hamas, which controls Gaza, stayed away.
A day after a ceasefire halted the worst round of fighting in Gaza in more than a year, Israeli troops killed three Palestinian militants and wounded dozens in a shootout that erupted during an arrest in the West Bank city of Nablus.
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