Jerusalem:
Israeli police said Sunday they had arrested a suspect in a bus shooting in Jerusalem’s Old City that left eight people injured, two seriously, including a pregnant woman.
“The terrorist is in our hands,” police spokesman Kan Eli Levy told public radio hours after the attack, not far from the Western Wall, the holiest place of worship for Jews.
A gunman started shooting bullets at the public transit bus and people outside the vehicle in the pre-dawn attack at the Tomb of David bus stop, bus driver Daniel Kanievsky said.
“I came from the Western Wall. The bus was full of passengers,” he later told reporters in front of his bullet-riddled vehicle.
“I stopped at the Tomb of David station. At this point the shooting started. Two people outside I see fall, two inside are bleeding. Everyone panicked.”
Israel’s emergency medical services Magen David Adom (MDA) called the incident a “terror attack in the old city”.
“We were on the scene very quickly,” the medics said in a statement.
“On Ma’ale Hashalom Street, we saw a passenger bus … in the middle of the road. Bystanders called us to treat two men, about 30 years old, who were on the bus with gunshot wounds.”
MDA spokesman Zaki Heller initially said six men and one woman were injured, with all seven “fully conscious”, before police brought the number injured to eight.
One of the injured was a pregnant woman whose baby was born after the attack, a spokesman for Shaarei Tsedek Hospital told AFP.
“She remains intubated and is in serious condition,” he said. “The child was delivered and is in a serious but stable condition.”
Pay a price
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said after the attack that the police, military and other security forces are “working to arrest the terrorist and will not stop until he is caught”.
“Anyone who wants to harm us should know that they will pay a price for any harm done to our citizens,” Lapid added in the statement.
“The police and the IDF are working to restore calm and a sense of security in the city,” he said, referring to Israeli forces.
The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, praised a “heroic operation” without claiming responsibility for the attack.
“Our people will continue to resist the occupying forces by all means,” it said in a statement.
The shooting came a week after the end of a three-day conflict between Israel and Islamic Jihad militants in the densely populated Palestinian enclave of Gaza.
At least 49 Palestinians, including Islamic Jihad fighters and a number of children, have been killed in the violence that ended last Sunday after Egypt concluded a ceasefire.
Since March, 19 people – mostly Israeli civilians in Israel – have been killed in attacks, mostly by Palestinians. Three Israeli Arab attackers were also killed.
In the wake of those attacks, Israeli security forces stepped up raids on the occupied West Bank.
Since then, more than 50 Palestinians, including fighters and civilians, have been killed in operations and incidents in the West Bank.