Police: 2 killed in Jerusalem after car plows into bus stop
JERUSALEM — A Palestinian plowed a car into a crowded bus stop in east Jerusalem on Friday, killing two people, including a 6-year-old, and injuring five others before being shot and killed, Israeli police and medics said, the latest escalation as violence grips the contested capital.
The incident took place in Ramot, a Jewish settlement in east Jerusalem. Tensions have soared in the Israeli-annexed eastern half of the city, following a Palestinian shooting attack outside a synagogue on Jan. 27 that killed seven people in the deadliest attack in Jerusalem in over a decade.
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 others, including an 8-year-old child in critical condition. Others, ranging in age from 10 to 40, were in moderate to serious condition.
“It was a shocking scene,” said paramedic Lishai Shemesh, who was driving by at the time of the attack. “I was in the car with my wife and children and noticed a car driving fast into the bus stop and crushing the people who were waiting there.”
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 32-year-old Hussein Qaraqa.
Speaking from the scene of the incident, Israel’s hard-line national 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.
Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, offered condolences to the victims’ families.
The Islamic militant groups Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, praised the rampage but did not immediately claim responsibility. Footage from the scene showed police and paramedics swarming a mangled blue Mazda that had slammed into the bus stop. Bodies lay strewn along the way.
As an immediate measure, 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.
Payments to prisoners’ families have been a central issue in Israel’s punitive measures against the Palestinians in recent months. The new Israeli government decided recently to deduct the sums the authority had paid to prisoners from tax revenue Israel transfers to the cashstrapped entity.
The authority sees the payments as a necessary social welfare. Israel says the so-called Martyrs’ Fund incentivizes violence.
The United States condemned Friday’s attack.
“The deliberate targeting of innocent civilians is repugnant and unconscionable,” a statement from the State Department said.