Palestinian teenager wounds two in East Jerusalem, day after another attack killed seven

A Palestinian teenager opened fire in East Jerusalem on Saturday, wounding two people, officials said, a day after another attacker killed seven outside a synagogue in the city’s deadliest attack since 2008.

The shooting in East Jerusalem’s Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, near the historic Old City, injured a father and son, aged 47 and 23, paramedics said.

The medics added that both were fully conscious and hospitalized in moderate to serious condition.

When police rushed to the scene, two passersby with licensed guns shot and overpowered the 13-year-old attacker, police said.

They confiscated his gun and took the injured teen to a hospital. Authorities cordoned off the street as emergency vehicles and security forces flooded the area and helicopters circled overhead.

“He was waiting to ambush civilians on the holy Sabbath day,” said Israeli police spokesman Dean Elsdunne, adding that the teenager opened fire on a group of five civilians. He described a “significant rise” in the level of Palestinian militant activity in recent days.

“The Israeli police will act accordingly,” he said.

Saturday’s events, on the eve of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s arrival in the region, have raised the possibility of an even bigger fire in one of the bloodiest months in Israel and the occupied West Bank in Israel. years.

On Friday, a Palestinian gunman killed at least seven people, including a 70-year-old woman, in a Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem, an area captured by Israel in 1967 and later annexed in an unrecognized move.

The attacks are a crucial test for Israel’s new far-right government.

The Israeli army said it had deployed another battalion to the West Bank on Saturday, adding hundreds more troops to a presence already on high alert in the occupied territory.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would convene his security cabinet later Saturday, after the end of the Sabbath, to discuss further response to the attack near the synagogue.

Security forces began a crackdown earlier in the day, fanning out near the 21-year-old Palestinian gunman, who was shot and killed on the spot.

Police arrested 42 of his relatives and neighbors for questioning in the At-Tur neighborhood of East Jerusalem.