A militant of the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement on Sunday opened fire in Jerusalem’s Old City, killing at least one person and wounding three others before he was shot dead, Israeli officials, police, and medics have confirmed.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett had ordered security to be boosted and called for people to be on ‘heightened alert’ over the risk of further attacks.
The wounded, who included two civilians and two police officers, were rushed to Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital. One of them, a man in his 30s, died of his injuries, medical sources said without giving further details.
In a statement on Sunday which was obtained by Africa Today News, New York, Bennett said, ‘This morning there was a serious shooting attack in the Old City of Jerusalem’.
‘At the moment we have one dead and three wounded. Two policewomen and one policeman quickly neutralised the terrorist.’
Police stated that the attacker had fired a ‘Carlo-type weapon’, a type of submachine gun.
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The Old City is in the Israeli-annexed eastern part of Jerusalem, which Palestinians claim as the capital of their future state.
Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it, in a move not recognised by most of the international community.
The body of the attacker, who died at the scene, was carried away on a stretcher.
Israel’s Public Security Minister Omer Bar-Lev said the attacker was a Palestinian living in the Shuafat neighbourhood in east Jerusalem.
‘He was a member of Hamas, the political branch not the armed wing,’ Bar-Lev told Israel’s Kan television channel, saying he had been wearing long robes to hide his weapon.
‘It appears he was wearing a large galabiya (robe) or that he had disguised himself as an Orthodox Jew,’ Bar-Lev said, adding the gunman’s wife had travelled abroad three days ago, while his son was also out of the country.
‘It seems that this attack is premeditated,’ Bar-Lev said.
Hamas, in power in the Gaza Strip, congratulated the gunman and hailed the ‘continuation’ of the fight to ‘liberate’ Jerusalem, but without specifically claiming the attack.
It comes six months to the day since the end of an 11-day war in Gaza with Israel in May.
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK