East Jerusalem — Two people, including a child, were killed Friday in car ramming attack on a bus stop in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, Israeli authorities said.
«As a result of the ramming, there are two dead and another five injured,» an Israeli police statement said. Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek hospital said those who died were 8 and 20 years old.
«The suspect was neutralized on the spot» in Ramot, a Jewish settlement in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, the Israeli police said, describing it as a «terror» attack.
«Forces of the Jerusalem district, including a detective who was off duty, arrived quickly at the scene, and fired at the terrorist who was neutralized on the spot,» the police added in a separate statement.
Israeli emergency responders work on a scene where two people were killed, including a child, and at least five others injured by a vehicle that struck a crowd at a bus stop near an Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem, February 10, 2023.
Ilia Yefimovich/picture alliance/Getty
An AFP journalist at the scene saw a blue car which had crashed into a bus stop. A pink children’s doll was among debris nearby.
A helicopter circled the scene overhead.
Dozens of onlookers gathered at the scene, many of them ultra-Orthodox Jews dressed in black and white clothes.
«It’s crazy what’s happening,» Nehurai Dery, who was on his way to visit his father in Ramot, told AFP. «The government should (find) a solution… But the government doesn’t want a solution. The government here, the government in Gaza, in Ramallah, they want the division.»
Friday’s car-ramming followed a week of violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
On Thursday, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian near the West Bank city of Hebron, the Palestinian health ministry said, after what the army called a «stabbing attack.»
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On Tuesday, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian teenager in the city of Nablus, according to the Palestinian health ministry, with the Israeli army saying he had fired on soldiers.
A day earlier, Israeli forces killed five suspected Palestinian gunmen in a raid in Jericho, in the Jordan Valley, after a days-long search for suspects in a shooting in a restaurant near the city.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has seen at least 43 Palestinians – including attackers, militants and civilians, killed this year. Eight Israeli civilians, including two children, and one Ukrainian have been killed over the same period, according to an AFP tally based on official statements.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Israel and the West Bank last month on a trip focused on urging calm amid an escalation of violence.
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During talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, Blinken urged both sides to prevent further bloodshed.
Last year was the deadliest year in the West Bank since the United Nations started tracking fatalities in the territory in 2005. In November, two people were killed and 13 wounded in bombings at two Jerusalem bus stops.
Israel captured Jerusalem’s eastern sector in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it in a move not recognized internationally.
