Jerusalem Tragedy: 3 Dead, 13 Injured in Shooting Incident
Three people were killed and 13 were hurt when two brothers from East Jerusalem opened fire on people waiting at a bus stop on a busy road going west of the city during rush hour.
The shooters were identified by the Shin Bet as Murad Namr, 38, and Ibrahim Namr, 30. They were also named by the intelligence service as Hamas members. Off-duty soldiers and a citizen with a gun killed both of them at the scene.
At about 7:40 a.m. local time, surveillance video from the bus stop showed two men getting out of a car flashing guns. This scared people and made them run back to the car, where police said they were killed.
An ambulance service said a 24-year-old woman died at the scene of the accident. A 73-year-old man and a 16-year-old girl, who were both seriously injured, were pronounced dead at hospitals soon after the accident. According to news accounts, the man who died was a rabbinical judge named Elimelech Wasserman.
Three people killed and 13 injured in Jerusalem shooting:
Three people killed and 13 injured in Jerusalem shooting https://t.co/s0tOSa5lwU
— Guardian news (@guardiannews) November 30, 2023
Israeli police said that the shooters came in a car and were “armed with an M16 rifle and a handgun,” according to their first investigation. After starting to shoot at bystanders, they were killed at the scene. The police said that a search of the car “revealed ammunition and weaponry.”
Shin Bet said that the shooters had been in jail before for terrorism-related crimes. The elder brother, Murad, was jailed for 10 years until 2020 for planning terrorist acts with help from Gaza. Ibrahim had been jailed in 2014.
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Israel’s security minister and leader of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, Itamar Ben-Gvir, went to the scene of the attack and said that the bus stop attack showed that Israel needed to use force against Hamas.
He told the Times of Israel, “This type of incident proves again how much we can’t show weakness, how much we have to speak to Hamas only through intentions, only through the war,” Ben-Gvir has asked for an end to the current peace deal in the past.
People in Israel should carry guns in public, he said, because of the attack. “Despite the criticism of all kinds of parties, I will continue this policy of handing out weapons everywhere,” he said.
After the attack, eight people were taken to two hospitals. Five of them were said to have major injuries by the media.