Five people lost their lives on Monday when gunmen opened fire at a bus stop on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Police said the attackers were shot and killed, while Israel’s ambulance service confirmed the fatalities.
It was not immediately clear who carried out the shooting or what was the motive. Palestinian terrorist group Hamas praised two Palestinian “resistance fighters” who it said had carried out the attack but it stopped short of claiming responsibility.
The ambulance service identified the five victims as a 50-year-old man, a woman in her fifties and three men in their thirties. It said 11 other people had suffered injuries, including six who were in a serious condition with gunshot wounds.
Israeli police said two attackers arrived by car and opened fire at a bus stop at Ramot Junction. They said a security officer and a civilian shot and killed the assailants. Several weapons, ammunition and a knife used by the attackers, who police only identified as “terrorists”, were recovered at the scene, police said.
Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian terrorist group, also praised the shooting but did not claim responsibility for it.
The junction is located in a part of Jerusalem that Israel captured in the 1967 war and later annexed in a move that the United Nations and most countries do not recognise.
‘A Very Severe Scene’
The prime minister’s office said Benjamin Netanyahu was holding a “situation assessment” with security officials.
Media footage showed a heavy police presence in the Ramot area following the shooting. The ambulance service said a paramedic arriving at the scene reported that several victims were lying on the road and the sidewalk, some unconscious.
“This was a very severe scene,” the ambulance service cited paramedic Fadi Dekaidek as saying.
The Israeli military said it had deployed soldiers to the area and were aiding police in the search for suspects. Soldiers were also operating in areas of Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank to conduct interrogations and “thwart terrorism”, it said.
In October 2024, two Palestinians, one armed with a gun and the other armed with a knife, killed seven people in Tel Aviv. In November 2023, two Palestinian gunmen killed three people at a Jerusalem bus stop. Israeli security services said that the attackers in the 2023 Jerusalem shooting were linked to Hamas.
(With inputs from Reuters)
