Americans Wounded in Jerusalem Shooting

Palestinian gunman injured 8 people in all
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Aug 14, 2022 6:35 AM CDT
Americans Wounded in Jerusalem Shooting
Israeli police at the scene of a shooting attack near the Old City of Jerusalem early Sunday.   (AP Photo/ Maya Alleruzzo)

A Palestinian gunman opened fire at a bus near Jerusalem’s Old City early Sunday, wounding eight in an attack that came a week after violence flared up between Israel and militants in Gaza, police and medics said. The US Ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, tweeted that American citizens were among the wounded. An embassy spokesperson disclosed no other information, and the details were in flux. CNN reports that five Americans were among the victims, while the Times of Israel reports that four of the injured were "members of a Satmar Hasidic family who came from the United States as tourists."

The shooting happened as the bus waited in a parking lot near the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray. Israeli media identified the suspected attacker as a 26-year-old Palestinian from east Jerusalem. Police said he turned himself in. Speaking at a meeting of his Cabinet Sunday, Israeli Prime Mnister Yair Lapid said the suspected attacker was a resident of Jerusalem who was operating alone during the shooting and who had previously been arrested by Israel. The attack in Jerusalem followed a tense week between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Last weekend, Israeli aircraft unleashed an offensive in the Gaza Strip targeting the militant group Islamic Jihad and setting off three days of fierce cross-border fighting. Forty-nine Palestinians, including 17 children and 14 militants, were killed, and several hundred were injured in the fighting, which ended with an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire. No Israeli was killed or seriously injured. A day after the cease-fire halted the worst round of Gaza fighting in more than a year, Israeli troops killed three Palestinian militants and wounded dozens in a shootout that erupted during an arrest raid in the West Bank city of Nablus.

(More Israel stories.)

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