A Palestinian gunman killed seven people outside an east Jerusalem synagogue during the Jewish Sabbath on Friday, in one of the deadliest attacks targeting Israelis in years that risked sparking widespread violence.
The shooting came a day after a major escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including an army raid in the occupied West Bank that killed nine people, rocket fire from Gaza and retaliatory Israeli strikes.
Israel’s police chief Kobi Shabtai called the shooting in the Neve Yaakov area “one of the worst attacks we have encountered in recent years.” It also fell on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Police said that “at around 8:15 pm (1815 GMT) a terrorist arrived at a synagogue in the Neve Yaakov boulevard in Jerusalem and proceeded to shoot at a number of people in the area.
“As a result of the terror attack, seven civilians were pronounced dead and three additional civilians were injured,” police said.
They said the gunman fled the scene in a car but was quickly tracked down and killed in an “exchange of fire” with police.
Police have identified the gunman as a Palestinian resident of east Jerusalem, which was annexed by Israel following the 1967 Six-Day War.
The surging violence comes a month after a new government, led by veteran Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, took power.
Netanyahu and his extreme-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the scene on Friday, as crowds chanted “death to Arabs,” AFP journalists at the scene said.
Speaking on television after visiting the scene, Netanyahu said his security cabinet would soon announce “immediate measures” in response and urged Israelis not to “take the law into their own hands.”
– ‘Horrific’ –
Shalom Borohov, a barber who lives near the synagogue, told AFP that after hearing gunshots he “went down to help people”.
“I saw the terrorist arriving with his car. He stopped in the middle of the junction, and shot from his car,” continuing to shoot as people came to the scene, he said.
Matanel Almalem, an 18-year-old student who lives nearby, told AFP that he ran down to the street after hearing the shooting and saw the gunman in a white Toyota Corolla.
“I heard a lot of shooting,” he said.
US President Joe Biden spoke with Netanyahu to condemn what he called a “horrific terror attack”.
“The president made clear that this was an attack against the civilised world,” the White House said in a readout of the call, adding that Biden also “stressed the ironclad US commitment to Israel’s security”.
(AFP)
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