Seven people died on Friday in a shooting attack in front of an East Jerusalem synagogue and the attacker was killed, in the latest episode of a spiral of violence unleashed yesterday by an Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank.
The attack, in a Jewish-settled neighborhood in the Israeli-annexed sector of Jerusalem, came just hours after an Israeli shelling of the Gaza Strip in response to rocket fire from the Palestinian enclave.
Israeli police commander Kobi Shabtai called the shooting “one of the worst attacks we’ve had in years”. It took place on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
According to police, “at around 8:15 pm local time, a terrorist approached a synagogue on Neve Yaakov Avenue in Jerusalem and opened fire on people in the area,” according to an official statement.
Seven civilians died as a result of the terrorist attack and three others were injured, police said. The shooter fled the scene by car and was tracked down and killed by police. The Magen David Adom (MDA, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross) recorded ten people shot.
The United States condemned the attack as “horrendous”. “We stand in solidarity with the Israeli people,” said State Department spokesman Vedant Patel. Earlier, Washington urged “all parties involved” to seek to “urgently defuse the crisis”.
– Raid through Jenin –
An Israeli operation in the refugee camp of Jenin, north of the West Bank, left nine dead, said the Ministry of Health of Palestine.
On the same day, another Palestinian was killed when he was hit by gunfire from Israeli troops in a separate incident near Ramallah, also in the West Bank.
Israel said it was a “counterterrorism” operation against Islamic Jihad.
The Palestinian Authority called the incursion a “massacre” and announced that it will no longer cooperate with Israel in security matters.
According to the UN, so many deaths have not been recorded in just one Israeli operation in the West Bank since the beginning of records of operations in 2005.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called for “an end to the endless cycle of violence”.
Before withdrawing, the Israeli forces “deliberately threw tear gas grenades” into the pediatric ward of a hospital in Jenin, “which caused some children to suffocate”, denounced the Palestinian Minister of Health, Mai Al Kaila.
“The operation took place not far from a hospital and it is possible that the tear gas entered through an open window,” an Israeli army spokesman told AFP.
The Jenin camp, created in 1953, is home to around 20,000 refugees, according to UNRWA, the UN agency in charge of Palestinian refugees.
– Bombing against Gaza –
Israel bombed the Gaza Strip in response to rocket fire from Palestinian territory.
The Israeli Army reported that it carried out at least two series of air strikes against areas of Hamas, after several rocket launches towards the south of the country.
The explosions hit Gaza City, according to AFP correspondents.
Neither side reported injuries. Most of the rockets fired from Gaza were intercepted by the Israeli air defense system.
Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, and Islamic Jihad participated in the shooting, indicated Khaled el-Batsh, an Islamic Jihad official, who, hours earlier, had said in a statement that the projectiles fired “carry a message: the enemy (Israel) must remain alert, because Palestinian blood shed is costly”.
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