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 flared up between Israel and militants in the Gaza Strip, 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 the Israeli hospitals treating them.
The shooting happened while the bus was waiting in a parking lot near the Western Wall, considered the holiest place for Jews to pray.
Israeli security forces entered the nearby Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan and pursued the suspected attacker.
The Jerusalem shooting followed a tense week between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Last weekend, Israeli planes launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip against the Islamic Jihad militant group, sparking three days of intense cross-border fighting.
Islamic Jihad fired hundreds of rockets during the flare-up to retaliate for airstrikes that killed two of its commanders and other militants.
Israeli investigators inspect the bus after the shooting. Photo: Ammar Awad/PortalIsrael said the attack was intended to thwart threats by the group to respond to the arrest of one of its officers in the occupied West Bank.
The fighting, which ended in an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire, killed 49 Palestinians, including 17 children and 14 militants, and wounded several hundred. No Israeli was killed or seriously injured.
The Islamist militant group Hamas, which controls Gaza, has remained on the sidelines.
A day after the ceasefire ended the worst fighting in Gaza in more than a year, Israeli forces killed three Palestinian militants and wounded dozens in a shootout that broke out during an arrest raid in the West Bank city of Nablus.