Palestinian teen shoots two, day after 7 are killed

Officials: 13-year-old wounds father, son in east Jerusalem.

A 13-year-old Palestinian attacker opened fire in east Jerusalem on Saturday, wounding two Israe- lis, officials said, a day after another assailant killed seven outside a synagogue in the deadliest attack in the city since 2008.

The shooting in the Pal- estinian neighborhood of Silwan in east Jerusalem, near the historic Old City, wounded a father and son, ages 47 and 23, paramedics said. Both were fully conscious and in moderate to serious condition in the hos- pital, the medics added.

As police rushed to the scene, two passers-by with licensed weapons shot and overpowered the 13-year-old attacker, police said. Police confiscated his handgun and took the wounded teen to a hospital. Video showed police escorting a wounded young man, wearing nothing but underwear, away from the scene and onto a stretcher, his hands cuffed behind his back. Authorities taped off the street, emergency vehicles and security forces swarmed the area and heli- copters whirled overhead.

“He waited to ambush civilians on the holy Sabbath day,” Israeli police spokes- man Dean Elsdunne told The Associated Press, adding that the teenager opened fire on a group of five civilians. Security footage showed the vic- tims to be observant Jews, wearing skullcaps and tzitzit, or knotted ritual tassels.

Elsdunne described a “significant rise” in the level of Palestinian militant activity in recent days. “The Israeli police are going to act accordingly,” he said.

Saturday’s events — on the eve of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s arrival in the region — raised the possibility of even greater conflagration in one of the bloodiest months in Israel and the occupied West Bank in several years.

On Friday, a Palestinian gunman killed at least seven people in a Jewish settlement in east Jerusalem, an area captured by Israel in 1967 and later annexed in a move not internationally recognized.

The attacks pose pivotal test for Israel’s new far-right government. Its firebrand minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has presented himself as an enforcer of law and order and grabbed headlines for his promises to take even stronger action against the Palestinians.

The Israeli army said it had deployed another battalion to the West Bank on Saturday, adding hundreds more troops to a presence already on heightened alert in the occupied territory.

In the Jenin refugee camp, the site of a deadly Israeli military raid on Thursday that fueled the latest escalation, footage showed Palestinians dancing and cheering in celebration of the shooting Saturday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would convene his Security Cabinet later, after the Sabbath, which ended at sundown, to discuss a further response to the attack near the synagogue.