Pregnant woman hurt in bus shooting
Jerusalem – Israeli police officers yesterday said they had arrested a suspect in a shooting of a bus in Jerusalem’s Old City which wounded eight people, two critically. Those hurt included a pregnant woman.
“The terrorist is in our hands,” police spokesperson Kan Eli Levy told public radio hours after the attack which took place not far from the Western Wall, the holiest prayer site for Jews.
A gunman started spraying bullets at the public transport bus and people outside the vehicle in the pre-dawn attack at the Tomb of David bus stop, recounted bus driver Daniel Kanievsky.
“I was coming 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 station... At this moment, the shooting started. Two people outside I see falling, two inside were bleeding. Everybody panicked.”
Israel’s emergency medical services, the Magen David Adom, called the incident a “terror attack in the Old City”.
“We were on the scene very quickly,” 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 males around 30 years old who were on the bus with gunshot wounds.”
The emergency services’ spokesperson, Zaki Heller, initially said six men and one woman were wounded, with all seven “fully conscious”, before police raised the wounded toll to eight.
The pregnant woman’s baby was delivered after the attack, a Shaarei Tsedek Hospital spokesprson said.