Arab Terrorist Slays Two, Including 6-Year-Old Boy, at Jerusalem Bus Stop

JERUSALEM — An Arab terrorist plowed a car into a crowded bus stop at Jerusalem Friday, killing two people, including a 6-year-old boy, and injuring five others before being shot and killed. The attack took place at the entrance to the neighborhood of Ramot. The Israeli capital has been on edge following a shooting attack January 27 by a Palestinian Arab who killed seven persons outside a synagogue in the deadliest terrorist attack at Jerusalem in more than a decade.Israeli rescue services identified the two killed as a 6-year-old boy named Yaakov Yisrael Pelli, and Shlomo Lederman, a newly married man in his 20s. The officials said medics were treating five injured, including an 8-year-old child in critical condition undergoing CPR. Others, ages ranging from 10 to 40, were in moderate to serious condition. They had been waiting at the bus stop before the car came crashing into the group, police said.“It was a shocking scene,” paramedic Lishai Shemesh, who happened to be driving by at the time of the attack, said. “I was in the car with my wife and children and noticed a car driving fast into the bus stop and crushing the people who were waiting there.”An off-duty detective shot and killed the terrorist driver at the scene, police added, describing him as a Palestinian in his 30s from Jerusalem. Palestinian media identified him as 32-year-old Hussein Qaraqa.Speaking from the scene of the suspected attack, Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, ordered police to set up checkpoints around the driver’s neighborhood of Issawiya to “check every vehicle.”The terrorist groups Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, praised the rampage but did not immediately claim responsibility. Footage from the scene showed police and paramedics swarming a mangled blue Mazda that had slammed into the bus stop. Bodies lay strewn along the way.President Herzog expressed shock and offered condolences to the families of the victims. “Our hearts are pained by the terrible news,” he said. So far this year, 43 Palestinians have been killed, according to a count by the Associated Press — 10 of them in a gunfight last month during an army raid in Jenin in the occupied West Bank. Most of the Palestinian casualties were targeted by Israel for terrorist activities. Israel’s new government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, had accused the previous government of inaction in the face of a deadly wave of Palestinian assaults last year.Mr. Netanyahu’s office said he dispatched more police forces to the area and directed them to arrest those in the driver’s “circle.” He and Mr. Ben-Gvir called for the immediate sealing of the assailant’s home ahead of its planned demolition.Israel uses home demolitions of Palestinian attackers’ family homes as a deterrent meant to prevent future attacks. The new government has announced its intention to accelerate the decades-old policy, sealing the family homes of two attackers in Jerusalem following a pair of shootings last month.Officials have also stepped up demolitions of Palestinian homes built without Israeli building permits in the city’s east, where some 200,000 Israelis live in Jewish neighborhoods.In the area of Wadi Qaddum earlier on Friday, Palestinians held midday prayers in protest outside an apartment building housing 100 residents that is slated to be razed. Mr. Netanyahu’s office has reportedly delayed the demolition. Correction: Pelli is the last name of the 6-year-old boy who was killed. The name was incorrect based on early reporting.

Arab Terrorist Slays Two, Including 6-Year-Old Boy, at Jerusalem Bus Stop

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