Shots in Jerusalem: at least six deaths and a arrest

At a shootout in Jerusalem, at least ten people were injured and six more were injured. Four civilians died at the center of the incident, two more succumbed to their injuries later in the hospital. The incident is said to have occurred on a bus at the Ramon intersection in East Jerusalem.

The police suspect an attack. Access routes were closed. According to the officials, the two assassins are said to have come in a vehicle for the Ramon crossing in northern Jerusalem. They would have opened the fire at a bus stop. A security officer and an armed civilian shot them and “switched off” them. The Zaka ambulance service announced that it was presumably two Palestinians. The Israeli security authorities assume that the two came from villages in the Ramallah region.

The radical Islamic Hamas said that the attackers were two militant Palestinians. The attack is a “reaction to the crimes of the crew and the genocide of our people,” said the Palestinian organization.

In the early afternoon, the Israeli security forces declared that they had arrested a resident of the Arabic eastern part of the city. The suspicion that he was involved in the preparation of the crime was said in a message. Together with the domestic secret service Schin Bet, an investigation was taken to hold everyone involved.

Videos are circulating on social networks that show the incident. A security guard from a nearby bus station told the Israeli TV channel Channel 13, two armed men had entered a bus at an intersection that shots had fallen. “The bus is perforated at the front of shots,” he said. One of the attackers also wore a knife.

MDA assistants who arrived shortly after the incident reported people who were unconscious on the street, on the side of the road and on the sidewalk near a bus stop. “There was great destruction, broken glass on the floor and a lot of excitement,” the newspaper “Jerusalem Post” quotes a first aider.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was supposed to present a hearing in his criminal trial at the Jerusalem District Court on Monday, postponed the appointment because of the incident, as his lawyers announced. Instead, Netanyahu called a crisis meeting. At the site of the attack, he said that his country is “on several fronts in the war against terrorism”. President Isaac Herzog wrote in online service X that “this terrible attack reminds us that we fight against absolute evil”.

Federal Foreign Minister Johann WadePhul (CDU) commented in online service X “deeply shocked over the fig terrorist attack”. His thoughts are among the relatives of the victims. “I wish the injured a quick recovery,” he added. “We condemn this attack on how we condemn any loss of human life,” said a spokesman for the EU Commission in Brussels. It was time to “break through the cycle of violence”. The attack shows how necessary a ceasefire is, he added with a view to the Gaza War.

Note: This post is continuously updated.