(Jerusalem) Israeli gunfire injured seven Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, hours after two Israelis were injured by gunfire in East Jerusalem in an attack that targeted their car near a Jewish religious site.
Six people with minor injuries from live ammunition were admitted to Jenin government hospital in the northern West Bank and a seventh injured in a nearby hospital, after an Israeli military raid, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
The Israeli army said for its part that it was carrying out an operation in this area of the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
Earlier on Tuesday, two Israelis were injured when gunfire aimed at their car in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of annexed East Jerusalem.
The Magen David Adom, Israel’s equivalent of the Red Cross, said the injured, two men, continued to drive after the attack, which occurred shortly before 7:10 a.m. (12:10 a.m. Eastern Time) and the had reported to the police, before being taken care of by the emergency services.
Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem said it received one of the two injured, 48, the other, in his 50s, having been admitted to Shaare Tsedek Hospital where he underwent emergency surgery. According to these two establishments, their lives are not in danger.
The shots took place not far from the tomb of Simon the Just, a place of pilgrimage for ultra-Orthodox Jews.
After the attack, the surroundings were cordoned off and AFP journalists saw large numbers of heavily armed law enforcement personnel deploying there.
Police said they found what they said was the weapon used by the assailant: a “Carlo” submachine gun, a model produced by hand by Palestinian armed groups in the occupied West Bank.
An AFP reporter saw police enter a Palestinian home surrounded by security forces as a drone hovered overhead.
Later that morning, most of the security forces had left Sheikh Jarrah, the area was reopened and traffic resumed as normal.
And on Tuesday evening, dozens of Israelis gathered in Sheikh Jarrah, some waving blue and white flags emblazoned with the Star of David near police officers, according to the same source.
The manhunt continues to find the perpetrator of the attack.
The violence comes in the final days of Ramadan and as Israel marks Holocaust Remembrance Day.
At the sound of sirens, motorists stopped for two minutes in Jerusalem in memory of the six million Jewish victims of Nazism during the Second World War.
“Everything stops, much like the Holocaust, when all those lives were cut short. But then the beauty of this commemoration is that when the siren stops, life resumes,” says Jamie Boskey, a 44-year-old Israeli-American singer holding her child in her arms, frozen to the sound of sirens.
Israeli Mayor of Jerusalem Moshe Lion, speaking at a ceremony at City Hall, said one of the main lessons of the Holocaust was “never to be powerless against those who seek to harm us”.
The Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood was at the heart of tensions in 2021 around the eviction of Palestinian residents in favor of Jewish settlers.
These tensions had contributed to the outbreak of the May 2021 war between Israel and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters in the Gaza Strip.
On Monday evening, an Israeli was injured by a Palestinian woman who attacked him with a knife at the Gush Etzion junction in the occupied West Bank, south of Bethlehem, according to the Israeli army.
From the same source, Israeli soldiers opened fire on the assailant and “neutralized” her, before she was evacuated to an Israeli hospital, without her life being in danger, according to medical sources.
The Israeli conflict has experienced a marked resurgence of tensions since the beginning of the year, after the entry into office at the end of December of one of the most right-wing governments in the history of Israel, led by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. .
Since the beginning of the year, it has claimed the lives of at least 96 Palestinians, 19 Israelis, a Ukrainian and an Italian, according to an AFP tally compiled from official Israeli and Palestinian sources.
These statistics include, on the Palestinian side, combatants and civilians including minors, and on the Israeli side, mostly civilians including minors, and three members of the Arab minority.
