Palestinian boy, 13, shot and wounded two Israeli men in East Jerusalem

A 13-year-old Palestinian boy opened fire in east Jerusalem on Saturday, injuring two Israelis, officials said.

A father and son, aged 47 and 23, were injured in the shooting in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem.

Bystanders shot the teen and disarmed him. The police confiscated his weapon and took him to the hospital.

Both Israeli men were fully conscious and in moderate to serious condition in the hospital, the medics added.

east Jerusalem

Video showed police escorting an injured teenager, dressed only in underwear, away from the crime scene and on a gurney, his hands cuffed behind his back. Authorities cordoned off the street, emergency and security vehicles swarmed the area and helicopters flew overhead.

“He was waiting to ambush civilians on the holy Sabbath day,” Israeli police spokesman Dean Elsdunne told The Associated Press, adding that the teenager opened fire on a group of five civilians. Security footage showed that the victims were observant Jews, wearing skullcaps and tzitzit, or knotted ritual tassels.

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.

The Jenin refugee camp, the site of an Israeli military raid on Thursday that killed nine people, showed footage of Palestinians dancing and cheering in honor of Saturday’s shooting.

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 21-year-old gunman was shot dead on the spot.

Israel’s new government

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

Prime Minister Benjamin said he would convene his security cabinet later, after the Sabbath, which ends at sunset, to discuss further response to Friday’s shooting.

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

Police Chief Kobi Shabtai permanently relocated a force similar to a SWAT team in the city and reinforced the troops by ordering the police to run 12-hour shifts. He urged the public to call a hotline if they see anything suspicious.

Invasion of the Israeli army

Thursday’s army raid, the deadliest single incursion into the West Bank since 2002, followed a particularly bloody month in which at least 30 Palestinians, militants and civilians were killed in clashes with Israelis in the West Bank, according to an AP count.

Last year, as the Israeli army intensified its arrest raids after a series of deadly Palestinian attacks in Israel, at least 150 Palestinians were killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. It was the highest annual death toll in more than a decade and a half. Last year, Palestinian attacks on Israelis killed 30 people.

Israel says most of the dead were militants. But young people who protested against the raids and others who were not involved in the confrontations have also been killed.

The Israeli army claims its raids are designed to dismantle militant networks and thwart attacks. But the Palestinians say they further entrench Israel’s 55-year, unrestricted occupation of the West Bank, which it captured along with East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East war. The Palestinians are demanding East Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state, and much of the world considers it illegally occupied. Israel claims Jerusalem as its united, sovereign capital.