JERUSALEM, Feb 10 (Reuters) – Two people, including a child, were killed and several others injured when a driver rammed his car into a group of people at a bus stop outside Jerusalem on Friday, officials said. Israeli emergency services.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the incident as a terrorist attack and ordered security forces to be strengthened.
A volunteer medic with the United Hatzalah Ambulance Service, Ariel Ben-David, told army radio: “Everyone was lying, lying around, in very bad shape. Unfortunately, one child did not survive.”
Police said the driver had been “neutralized” but it was not immediately confirmed that he had died. A man who said he witnessed the attack from his car told Israel’s Channel 12 that an armed civilian had shot the attacker before a police officer arrived and also shot at the car.
The incident came during a period of heightened tension following an attack in which a lone Palestinian gunman shot dead seven people outside a synagogue last month.
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The Minister of Hardline Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, responsible for the police forces in the area, visited the scene.
Images circulating on social media showed a blue car that had crashed into a pole in front of a bus stop in the Ramot area, a part of Jerusalem that was annexed by Israel after the war. ‘Middle East of 1967.
Israeli forces have carried out hundreds of arrests in recent months during near-daily raids in the occupied West Bank that have seen bloody shootouts with Palestinian militants. More than 35 Palestinians, including gunmen and civilians, have been killed so far this year.
A spokesman for Hamas, the Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip, praised the attack as a “heroic operation” but did not claim responsibility.
Reporting by Maayan Lubell, Dan Williams, Writing by James Mackenzie, Editing by Philippa Fletcher and Nick Macfie
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