A view of the scene of the attack in East Jerusalem, where a driver drove his car into people, killing two people and injuring five others. The police shot the driver on the spot. 10 Feb 2023.
Jerusalem – Two people, including a six-year-old child, were killed today in East Jerusalem by a man who drove his car into people. Another five people were injured, including a child who is in critical condition, local media reports. The attacker was shot by the police on the spot. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was a terrorist attack.
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According to The Times of Israel, a six-year-old boy and a twenty-year-old man died in the attack. A child is also among the five injured. The Jerusalem Post wrote that the police have already identified the attacker as a 31-year-old resident of East Jerusalem.
The driver ran into people at a bus stop in Ramot, a Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem.
President Yitzhak Herzog and Prime Minister Netanyahu have already expressed their condolences to the bereaved. The Prime Minister also ordered the demolition of the attacker's house and increased security measures. “I assessed the situation and ordered the strengthening of security forces as well as the arrest and immediate sealing of the terrorist's house and its demolition. Our response to terrorism is to strike at it with all our might and to further deepen our control over our country,” Netanyahu said.
Tensions have risen in Israel in connection with the new Netanyahu government, which also includes far-right parties whose members support the annexation of Israeli-occupied territories, which the Palestinians demand as part of their future state. The situation has been exacerbated by raids by the Israeli army in the occupied West Bank, which target Palestinian radicals and during which soldiers have shot a number of Palestinian radicals, as well as several civilians, since last year. At the end of last month, during one such raid, soldiers killed nine Palestinians, and a day later, a Palestinian gunman shot dead seven people and wounded several others in a terrorist attack in a synagogue in East Jerusalem.
The issue of Jerusalem is one of the most vexing topics of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. While Israel considers Jerusalem to be its indivisible capital, the Palestinians want its eastern part to become the capital of a future Palestinian state.
