Officials said a 13-year-old boy opened fire on Saturday and wounded two people in east Jerusalem, just hours after a gunman killed seven outside a synagogue in the city’s deadliest attack since 2008.
A father and son, aged 47 and 23, were wounded in a shooting in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in east Jerusalem, near the historic Old City, according to doctors. Both are fully conscious and are in the hospital in a moderate condition, doctors added.
Police said they shot and wounded the 13-year-old assailant. According to them, he was taken to the hospital, and nothing more was reported about his condition. The video shows how the police take the injured young man, dressed only in his underwear, from the scene onto a stretcher.
Authorities blocked the street, ambulances and security forces flooded the area, and helicopters swept overhead.
Saturday’s events – just a day before US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was scheduled to arrive in the region – raised the possibility of an even bigger fire in one of the bloodiest months in Israel and the occupied West Bank in several years.
On Friday, a gunman killed at least seven people, including a 70-year-old woman, in a Jewish settlement in east Jerusalem, an area seized by Israel in 1967 and then annexed in a move that failed to gain international recognition.
The Israeli army said it deployed another battalion to the West Bank on Saturday, adding hundreds more troops to those already on high alert in occupied territory.
Prime Minister Benjamin said he would convene his security cabinet on Saturday evening, after the end of Saturday, to discuss a further response to the attack outside the synagogue. Security forces launched a crackdown early Saturday morning, sweeping the area around the 21-year-old gunman, who was shot dead at the scene. Police arrested 42 members of his family and neighbors for questioning in the At-Tur neighborhood in east Jerusalem.
Friday’s previous attack, which occurred while residents were observing the Jewish Shabbat, came a day after an Israeli military raid killed nine Palestinians in the West Bank, including an elderly woman.
Thursday’s raid, the deadliest incursion into the West Bank since 2002, follows a particularly bloody month in which at least 30 Palestinian militants and civilians were killed in clashes with Israelis in the West Bank.
