Palestinian driver plows into Jerusalem bus stop, killing man, boy

JERUSALEM — A Palestinian rammed a car into a crowded bus stop Friday in east Jerusalem, killing two people and injuring five others before being shot and killed, Israeli police and medics said.

The incident took place in Ramot, a Jewish settlement. The Israeli rescue service identified the two killed as a 6-year-old boy and a man in his 20s.

It said medics were treating five injured, including an 8-year-old child in critical condition. Others, in ages ranging from 10 to 40, were in moderate to serious condition.

An off-duty detective shot and killed the suspected attacker at the scene, police added, describing him as a Palestinian in his 30s from east Jerusalem. Palestinian media identified him as Hussein Qaraqa, 32.

Speaking from the scene, Israel’s hard-line security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, ordered police to set up checkpoints around the driver’s neighborhood of Issawiya to “check every vehicle.”

“I wanted to create a full blockade [on the area], but there is a judicial question around it,” he added.

“Our hearts are pained by the terrible news,” said Isaac Herzog, Israel’s largely ceremonial president.

The Islamic militant groups Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, praised the rampage but did not immediately claim responsibility.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant imposed financial sanctions on 87 Palestinian residents of east Jerusalem, seizing millions of dollars from people involved in violence against Israel who receive payments from the Palestinian Authority, as well as their families.

The Palestinian Authority claims that payments to prisoners’ families are a necessary social welfare while Israel says the “Martyrs’ Fund” incentivizes violence.

Meanwhile, the United States condemned the attack in Jerusalem.

“The deliberate targeting of innocent civilians is repugnant and unconscionable,” the State Department said.

Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its undivided capital, while the Palestinians seek east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as a capital of their future state.

So far this year, 43 Palestinians have been killed, according to a count by The Associated Press — 10 of them in a gunfight last month during an army raid in Jenin in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he dispatched more police forces to the area and directed them to arrest those in the driver’s “circle.”

The new government has announced its intention to accelerate the decades-old policy of home demolitions, sealing the family homes of two attackers in east Jerusalem after a pair of shootings last month.

Israel defends such home demolitions of Palestinian attackers’ family homes as a deterrent meant to prevent future attacks. But human rights groups criticize the practice as collective punishment, prohibited by international law, leaving relatives homeless who had nothing to do with the attack.

In the area of Wadi Qaddum earlier Friday, Palestinians held midday prayers in protest outside an apartment building housing 100 residents that is scheduled to be razed. Netanyahu’s office has reportedly delayed the demolition.

Heavily armed police burst into the area as men gathered in prayer, confiscating Palestinian flags and firing tear gas to disperse the demonstration.