Two Israelis wounded in occupied East Jerusalem shooting

The incident comes a day after a Palestinian killed seven people near a synagogue following Israel’s deadly raid in the Jenin refugee camp.

Israel forces stand guard at the scene of a shooting attack in Neve Yaacov which lies on occupied land that Israel annexed to Jerusalem after the 1967 Middle East war.
Israeli forces stand guard at the scene of a shooting attack in Neve Yaacov which lies on occupied land that Israel annexed [Ammar Awad/Reuters]

Two people have been wounded in a shooting attack in occupied East Jerusalem, officials said, a day after seven people were killed in an attack near a synagogue in the city.

A father, 47, and son, 23, were in serious condition with “gunshot wounds to their upper body”, a spokesperson for Israel’s rescue emergency response service (MDA) said, after the shooting in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan, near Jerusalem’s Old City.

A police spokesman told Israel’s Army Radio that Saturday’s incident was a “terrorist attack” and that the assailant, who was “neutralised and injured”, was a 13-year-old Palestinian from occupied East Jerusalem.

The incident came a day after a Palestinian attacker shot dead seven people near a synagogue on the outskirts of the city.

On Thursday, Israel carried out a deadly raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. Ten Palestinians were killed, including an elderly woman, after dozens of Israeli soldiers attacked a house the army said housed suspected fighters, leading to several hours of intense confrontations.

It was one of the deadliest Israeli army raids in the occupied West Bank since the second Intifada, or uprising, of 2000 to 2005.

A 22-year-old Palestinian man was shot by Israeli forces in the town of al-Ram, north of Jerusalem, in a separate incident on Thursday.

Israel also launched multiple air attacks on the besieged Gaza Strip overnight on Thursday.

Local sources in Gaza told Al Jazeera that Israeli warplanes hit the al-Maghazi refugee camp in the centre of the territory, with at least 13 attacks by the early hours of Friday.

Police said they arrested 42 Palestinians following Friday’s attack.

In a separate statement, police said the force had been placed on the “highest level” of alert following the attack. The Israeli army said it had deployed another battalion to the occupied West Bank on Saturday, adding hundreds more troops to a presence already on heightened alert in the occupied territory.

Before Friday’s shooting, at least 30 Palestinians had been killed this year and the Palestinian Authority, which has limited governing powers in the occupied West Bank, said it was suspending a security cooperation arrangement with Israel.

Last year, as the Israeli military intensified its arrest raids following a string of deadly Palestinian attacks within Israel, at least 150 Palestinians were killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. It was the highest annual death toll for more than a decade and a half. Thirty people were killed in Palestinian attacks against Israelis last year.

Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies

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