A vehicle overturned people waiting at a bus stop, also injuring five. Its driver was shot dead. A police spokesman referred to a “terrorist attack with a ram car”.
A man driving a car ran over bystanders at a bus stop in East Jerusalem, killing an 8-year-old child and a 20-year-old man on Friday, February 10, according to Israeli police, who say he is is a “terrorist car bombing”. She announces that she has “neutralized” the driver, who is dead. Five other people are injured, two of them in critical condition, medical officials said.
According to a police spokesperson, “the driver of a vehicle drove at high speed” towards a crossroads in Ramot, a settlement district in this part of Jerusalem annexed by Israel, before hitting these passers-by. “Jerusalem District Police, including an off-duty inspector, quickly arrived on the scene and fired at the terrorist who was neutralized”he added, without giving details on the identity of the driver.
The Minister of the Interior puts the death penalty on the table
Figure of the extreme right, the Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, went there shortly after the attack. He was singled out by an angry mob who blamed him for betraying his campaign promise to provide security. He reiterated his desire to “implement death penalty legislation for terrorists”.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his part indicated that he had “decided to take immediate action to seal the terrorist’s house and destroy it.”
The tragedy took place a few hours before the start of Shabbat, the Jewish weekly rest, when “so many people were waiting at a bus stop to travel (…) during the weekend”said Eli Beer, president of United Hatzalah, a volunteer relief organization.
Since the beginning of the year, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed the lives of at least 43 Palestinians (including combatants and civilians, including minors), eight Israeli civilians (including two minors), and one Ukrainian woman, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli and Palestinian sources. In late January, a Palestinian from Jerusalem shot and killed six Israelis and a Ukrainian woman near a synagogue in another Jewish settlement neighborhood of East Jerusalem.
On Thursday, a Palestinian, accused by the Israeli army of having tried to stab one of its soldiers, was shot dead by soldiers in the occupied West Bank. On Friday, the Palestinian Authority accused Israel of “medical negligence” after the death of a Palestinian detainee in prison, an allegation that Israeli diplomacy described as “unfounded”.