Eight people were injured, two seriously, in an armed attack on a bus early Sunday in Jerusalem, Israeli police and paramedics said.
“The police have been informed of a shooting against a bus near David’s Tomb (…) the police have cordoned off the scene and are looking for a suspect who fled”, indicated the police before announcing that a man had been arrested.
“The terrorist is in our hands,” police spokesman Eli Levy told Kan public radio.
The Magen David Adom, Israel’s equivalent of the Red Cross, said it intervened after receiving reports of shootings at a bus in Jerusalem.
His spokesman Zaki Heller reported seven injured, “all conscious, one woman and six men, two of whom are in serious condition” and the police reported eight injured according to a latest report.
The spokesman for Shaarei Tsedek Hospital in Jerusalem told AFP that medical teams had to perform a caesarean section on a pregnant woman injured in the attack.
“She remains intubated and in serious condition. The baby was born and is in stable condition,” he said.
“Anyone who wants to harm us should know that they will pay the price for any harm to our civilians,” Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said in a statement Sunday.
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 with 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 time, the shooting started,” testified bus driver Daniel Kanievsky to a small group of journalists on the spot, including AFP.
“I saw two people on the bus bleeding. Everyone was panicking,” he added, in front of his bullet-riddled bus, at the foot of the Old City of Jerusalem.
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 stepped up 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 children, died in this weekend of military escalation which ended last Sunday with a truce favored by the mediation of Egypt.