Seven dead after attack on Israel synagogue
Assault follows vandalising of Palestinian cafes in Jerusalem as US calls for end to ‘cycle of violence’
Seven Israelis were shot dead and several others wounded last night as a Palestinian terrorist opened fire on Jews leaving a synagogue in East Jerusalem. Israeli police said that the gunman, who has not yet been named, was killed shortly after officers arrived on the scene. The attack took place in the Israeli settlement of Neve Yaakov, local media reports said. It came as tensions grew over an Israeli raid on militants in the West Bank on Thursday.
SEVEN Israelis were shot dead and several others wounded last night as a Palestinian terrorist opened fire on Jews leaving a synagogue in East Jerusalem.
Israeli police said the gunman, who has not yet been named, was killed shortly after officers arrived on the scene.
The attack took place at a synagogue in the Israeli settlement of Neve Yaakov, local media reports said, with an elderly man and a teenager believed to be among the victims. Last night, police sirens roared across East Jerusalem as officers cordoned off the scene. The attack took place on Holocaust Memorial Day and after the beginning of Shabbat in the Jewish faith.
Israeli police said the attacker arrived at the scene in a car at around 8.15pm and opened fire with a handgun, killing seven and wounding three others.
He then went “on the run” but was caught within five minutes and shot dead, police said.
One local media report identified the shooter as a young Palestinian man from East Jerusalem.
The attack appeared to be the deadliest in Jerusalem since the 2014 Har Nof synagogue shooting, in which four rabbis and a police officer were killed by Palestinian terrorists.
Tensions were already high in Israel and the West Bank over Thursday’s Israeli raid on Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants in the Jenin refugee camp, which left nine dead including an elderly woman.
Earlier yesterday, young Israeli men were filmed vandalising Palestinian cafés in Jerusalem’s Old City, as the United States called for a swift end to a “cycle of violence” in the Holy Land.
The youths, carrying Israeli flags, entered the Christian quarter and began harassing residents and tourists, according to a statement by the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.
It was not immediately clear last night if Islamic Jihad was behind yesterday’s
Jerusalem attack, which Vedant Patel, a US state department spokesman, condemned as “heinous”. “Our thoughts, prayers and condolences go out to those killed by this heinous act of violence. We condemn this apparent terrorist attack in the strongest terms,” he said.
“I heard a lot of bullets,” Matanel Almalem, an 18-year-old student who lives near the synagogue, told AFP news agency at the scene.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, held a security assessment last night while Israel’s defence minister was recalled from a trip to the US.
Earlier, Palestinian fighters in Gaza launched a small number of rockets at Israel in retaliation over the raid on Jenin, with most intercepted by Israeli air defence. Israel responded with an air strike on an underground factory used by Hamas to produce rockets. The restrained exchange of fire suggested that both sides had at that point hoped to avoid a significant escalation.
Last night’s attack is the first security crisis for Mr Netanyahu’s new government, which is propped up by ultranationalist far-right Israeli politicians.
Hamas in Gaza did not claim responsibility but said the attack was “a response to the crime conducted by the occupation in Jenin and a natural response to the occupation’s criminal actions”.
Midday prayers at the Al-aqsa Mosque compound, which can be a catalyst for clashes, passed in relative calm.
Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, is to visit Israel and the Palestinian territories next week and is said to be “working the phones” to prevent another major escalation.