Palestinian shot dead after holy site killing
A PALESTINIAN man was shot dead by Israeli police after he killed one Israeli and wounded four others near the entrance to a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site on Sunday, police said.
Police said the violence took place near an entrance to a shrine known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.
Violence surrounding the site, which is considered holy by both faiths, has triggered previous fighting between Israel and the Palestinians, most recently in May.
Paramedics said one person suffered critical injuries, one suffered serious wounds, and three others were lightly injured. The paramedics said the Palestinian attacker was confirmed dead at the scene.
Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital later said the critically injured person had died. He was later identified as 26-year-old Eliyahu Kay, a South African-born immigrant to Israel who worked at the Western Wall.
Rabbi Zevi Katzanelbogen, a resident of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, said he was walking home from morning prayers at the Western Wall, when he turned a corner and demonstration, which police estimated at 35,000 people, were also protesting against the strong advice to get vaccinated and any moves to impose mandatory jabs.
Shouting “Freedom, freedom, freedom”, and singing the antifascist song Bella Ciao, protesters heard gunfire. Moments later he was struck in the arm by a bullet, he told reporters from his hospital bed.
Police said two of those lightly injured were officers and identified the attacker as a 42-year-old east Jerusalem resident.
Public security minister Omer Bar Lev told reporters the gunman was a member of Hamas’s political arm from the Shuafat refugee camp in east Jerusalem, and that his wife had left the country three days earlier.
Palestinian media identified the attacker as Fadi Abu Shkhaidem, a teacher at a secondary school near the Old City.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said he had ordered security forces to be on alert to prevent other attacks.
The Hamas militant group praised the attack in a statement but stopped short of claiming responsibility, calling the incident a “heroic operation”. It later claimed Mr Abu Shkhaidem as one of its members.
“Our people’s resistance will continue to be legitimate by all means and tools against the Zionist occupier violence as the first marchers reached the end point outside European Union headquarters.
Over the past several days, there have been marches in many European nations as one government after another tightened measures. until our desired goals are achieved and the occupation is expelled from our holy sites and all of our lands,” spokesman Abdel Latif al-Qanou said.
Dimiter Tzantchev, the EU ambassador-designate to Israel, said in a statement on Twitter that his thoughts were “with the victims of the cowardly attack in the Old City of Jerusalem” and condemned “this senseless attack against civilians. Violence is never the answer”.
Sunday’s incident was the second of its kind in Jerusalem’s historic Old City in recent days.
On Wednesday, a Palestinian teenager was fatally shot after stabbing two Israeli border police.
In that incident, the two officers were admitted to hospital and the teenager, identified by police as a 16-year-old from east Jerusalem, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Palestinians have carried out dozens of stabbings, shootings and carrammings targeting Israeli civilians and security personnel in recent years. Palestinian rights groups contend some of the alleged car-rammings were accidents and accuse Israel of using excessive force.