Two people, including a child, were killed in a car‑ramming attack on a bus stop in Israeli‑annexed east Jerusalem on Friday, Israeli authorities said. The driver, a 31‑year‑old resident of Issawiya, a Palestinian neighbourhood of east Jerusalem, struck “innocent people waiting at the bus stop” at high speed around 1:30 pm (1130 GMT). The ramming left two dead and five injured, and the suspect was neutralised on the spot in Ramot, a Jewish settler neighbourhood, police described the incident as a “terror” attack.
Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek hospital identified the 20‑year‑old victim as Alter Shlomo Lederman, a yeshiva student who died shortly after admission. Police later confirmed that the child killed was six years old. A second child, aged eight, remains in critical condition, with doctors “fighting to keep him alive.” An AFP journalist at the scene saw a blue car that had crashed into the bus stop, with a pink child’s doll among the debris.
The attack was condemned by Washington as “unconscionable.” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the deliberate targeting of civilians “repugnant and unconscionable.” Israel’s far‑right Public Security Minister Itamar Ben‑Gvir was confronted by protesters at the scene for failing to deliver on his security promises; he reiterated his push to “implement death‑penalty legislation for terrorists.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced an immediate decision to seal and demolish the terrorist’s home.
The incident follows a surge of violence in the Israeli‑Palestinian conflict this year. Late last month, an attack outside a synagogue in east Jerusalem killed six Israelis and a Ukrainian, marking the deadliest targeting of Israeli civilians in more than a decade. Earlier in the week, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian near Hebron after a “stabbing attack,” and a Palestinian teenager in Nablus after the military said he fired on soldiers. The day before the bus‑stop attack, Israeli troops killed five suspected Palestinian gunmen in Jericho during a raid linked to a restaurant shooting.
Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad praised the bus‑stop ramming as a “heroic” and “legitimate response” to the occupation. UN Middle East peace envoy Tor Wennesland warned that such attacks and their glorification fuel an endless cycle of bloodshed and must be condemned by all. Dozens of onlookers, many dressed in ultra‑Orthodox black and white, gathered at the scene. Nehurai Dery, a construction‑company owner who was on his way to visit his father in Ramot, described the situation as “crazy” and called for a governmental solution, accusing both Israeli and Palestinian authorities of fostering division.
According to an AFP tally based on official statements, at least 43 Palestinians—including attackers, militants and civilians—have been killed this year, while eight Israeli civilians, two of them children, and one Ukrainian have also died. The United States’ secretary of state visited Israel and the West Bank last month, urging both sides to prevent further bloodshed. The conflict’s death toll makes 2023 the deadliest year in the West Bank since the United Nations began tracking fatalities in 2005. Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six‑Day War and later annexed it, a move not recognised by the international community.
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