Seven people were killed and others injured by gunfire in a shooting in Neve Yaakov Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem. The perpetrator of the attack is a Palestinian living in the Shuafat refugee camp. This was stated by the Jerusalem police chief according to whom the man fired in front of the synagogue as the faithful were leaving after Friday prayers and then escaped in a car. Reached by the officers he shot at the cops before being shot in turn.
“A heroic operation”: this is how Islamic Jihad defined the attack while Hamas claimed that it was “revenge for the dead in Jenin”. After the attack, scenes of celebrations were seen in the Gaza Strip. The Islamist movement Hamas celebrated through the loudspeakers of the mosques, without however claiming the action.
“We are facing one of the worst attacks in recent years. The terrorist started shooting anyone he encountered at close range,” said Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai. “Even those who had come to see what had happened were killed.” Faced with the controversy, already spreading and raised by some of the witnesses, about the fact that the police would arrive late, the commissioner assured that “within five minutes of the call, a team of agents arrived at the scene”. The site of the attack was visited by the Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gabir and the prime minister should also arrive Benjamin Netanyahu.
The United States has condemned what appears to be a “terrorist attack” calling it “horrible,” said US State Department spokesman Vedant Patel, specifying that no changes are currently planned for the secretary of state’s trip Antony Blink in Israel. “An act of terror, even more horrendous on the day we commemorate the Shoah. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their loved ones”, said the Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani.
The attack comes after a night of tension, with rockets fired from Gaza into southern Israel and retaliatory attacks by the Israeli air force, following the clashes in Jenin in West Bank, where nine Palestinians were killed in an army raid as part of an “anti-terrorist operation”. However, a vigilant calm had returned during the day, with analysts recalling that both Hamas and Israel do not intend to further escalate.