Shooting attack in East Jerusalem wounds two

Jerusalem, Apr 18 (EFE).- Two persons were injured in a gunshot incident in an east Jerusalem neighborhood Tuesday morning, the Israeli police said.

The alleged gunman escaped before security authorities started a search operation to apprehend him in the occupied territory’s Sheikh Yarrah neighborhood.

According to the Magen David Adom emergency agency, two men, aged 50 and 48, were treated at the site and taken to Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem.

A massive police deployment, including patrol vehicles and a helicopter, is presently searching for the suspect in the “terrorist attack,” according to the police.

Attacks by Arabs or Palestinians are typically labeled as acts of terror by Israeli authorities.

According to authorities, the victims were inside a car when they were attacked in the heart of the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Yarrah.

Jewish settler families have established in the area, turning it into a flashpoint in East Jerusalem.

In decades-long legal fights, Jewish nationalists attempted to remove Palestinian inhabitants, sparking the 11-day confrontation between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip in May 2021.

The shooting incident in Jerusalem occurred only hours after a Palestinian woman stabbed and mildly injured an Israeli male at the entrance to a settlement in the occupied West Bank near Jerusalem on Monday night.

The fresh shooting comes at a time when tensions between Israelis and Palestinians are at an all-time high.

The wave of violence was triggered by clashes between Israeli police and Palestinians in the Al-Aqsa mosque in the middle of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting.

The situation between Israelis and Palestinians has been tense for months.

So far this year, nearly 100 Palestinians, including suspected militants, civilians, and minors, have been killed in clashes with Israeli troops.

On the Israeli side, 19 people died in 2023.

Israel took control of East Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967 and has occupied and colonized these territories ever since. EFE

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