Following a deadly raid in the West Bank the previous day, a shooter killed seven people at an east Jerusalem synagogue on Friday, according to Israeli authorities.
After Israeli and Palestinian combatants in the Gaza Strip exchanged missile fire earlier on Friday, worldwide demands for calm grew. This is when the shooting in the Neve Yaakov neighbourhood of east Jerusalem, which Israel has occupied, took place.
According to a police statement, the shooter “arrived at a synagogue on the Neve Yaakov Boulevard in Jerusalem and proceeded to shoot at a number of people in the area” before being “neutralized.”
Seven individuals had died, a police spokesman told AFP.
The Magen David Adom emergency response team reported a total of 10 gunshot victims, including a 70-year-old male and a 14-year-old boy.
Student Matanel Almalem, 18, who lives close to the synagogue, told AFP, “I heard a lot of bullets.”
The extreme right in Israel Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, arrived on the scene immediately after, according to an AFP photographer. The police were breaking down a white car they thought belonged to the shooter.
The United States and the United Kingdom rushed to condemn the “absolutely horrible” attack, even though they had not used the same language in the past to condemn Israeli violence that killed Palestinians.
Vedant Patel, a spokeswoman for the State Department, said, “Our commitment to Israel’s security remains unwavering, and we are in direct contact with our Israeli colleagues.”
Washington had called for a “de-escalation” of the violence in the West Bank and Gaza just hours earlier.
raid in Jenin
On Thursday, nine Palestinians were killed in what Israel described as a “counter-terrorism” operation in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.
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It has been one of the deadliest Israeli army incursions in the occupied West Bank since the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, which lasted from 2000 to 2005.
Israel stated that the intended target was an agent of Islamic Jihad.
Islamists in Gaza, who are led by Islamic Jihad, and Hamas pledged to retaliate and afterwards launched numerous missiles at Israeli territory.
Israeli air defences were able to intercept the majority of the rockets. The military retaliated by attacking the occupied Gaza Strip.
No one was hurt on either side, but Gaza’s armed groups have threatened more violence.
The UN human rights office had already called the violence in the West Bank a “never-ending cycle” and said on Twitter that it “must end.”
Shots rang out in the streets and barricades burned as Israeli forces attacked the packed Jenin refugee camp early on Thursday.
During a “counterterrorism operation to capture an Islamic Jihad terror squad,” the military said, Israeli forces came under fire and shot a number of enemy fighters.
The Palestinian Authority announced it was halting security coordination with Israel in response to the violence, a decision that was criticised by the US.
According to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the raid was directed against members of Islamic Jihad who were reportedly responsible for attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians and who planned “to launch a terror act in Israel,” according to the IDF.
Israeli forces shot two more Palestinians who were “fleeing the scene,” according to an army statement, while three Palestinians were shot during a shootout. The army reported that other Palestinians were injured after firing on Israeli troops, and a sixth suspect was also shot by Israeli police inside a structure.
The Israeli military claimed that there were no deaths among its personnel.
‘Massacre’
The paediatric ward was in a “state of terror,” according to Wisam Bakr, director of the Jenin Government Hospital, and some kids were suffering from tear gas inhalation.
“The activity was not far from the hospital, and it is probable that some tear gas entered through an open window,” the Israeli military told AFP.
Homes were hit during the operation, according to Umm Youssef al-Sawalmi, a resident of Jenin. The bullets “damaged everything, including the refrigerator, walls, doors, and windows,” she told AFP.
With the deaths on Thursday, there have now been 30 Palestinian deaths in the West Bank this year. These deaths include both fighters and civilians, and most of them were caused by Israeli troops shooting at them.
Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy head of Hamas, promised that Israel “would pay the price for the Jenin slaughter.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Israel and the Palestinian territories next week, where he will advocate for an “end to the cycle of bloodshed,” Washington stated earlier on Thursday.
The visit will definitely go forward, according to a State Department spokeswoman on Friday.
The rising death toll comes after the UN’s bloodiest year ever for the Palestinian territories.
Official sources told AFP that at least 200 Palestinians and 26 Israelis were killed in Israel and the Palestinian territories in 2022. Most of the deaths happened in the West Bank.
AFP.
