One dead in Jerusalem shooting, attacker killed: Police

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett ordered security to be boosted and called for people to be on "heightened alert" over the risk of further attacks.
Israeli security personnel and members of Zaka Rescue and Recovery team carry the body of a Palestinian man who was fatally shot by Israeli police after he killed one Israeli and wounded four. (AP)
Israeli security personnel and members of Zaka Rescue and Recovery team carry the body of a Palestinian man who was fatally shot by Israeli police after he killed one Israeli and wounded four. (AP)

JERUSALEM: A militant of the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement opened fire Sunday, November 21, 2021, in Jerusalem's Old City, killing one person and wounding three before he was shot dead, Israeli officials, police and medics said.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett ordered security to be boosted and called for people to be on "heightened alert" over the risk of further attacks.

The wounded, who included two civilians and two police officers, were rushed to Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital. 

"This morning there was a serious shooting attack in the Old City of Jerusalem," Bennett said in a statement. "At the moment we have one dead and three wounded. 

"Two policewomen and one policeman quickly neutralised the terrorist."

The Western Wall Heritage Foundation identified the victim as Eliyahu Kaye, an immigrant from South Africa, who was employed by them as a guide the Western Wall plaza.

The immigration ministry said he was 25 and had come to Israel in 2019.

Police said the attacker had fired a "Carlo-type weapon", a type of submachine gun.

The Old City is in the Israeli-annexed eastern part of Jerusalem, which Palestinians claim as the capital of their future state.

Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it, in a move not recognised by most of the international community.

After the shooting, dozens of police officers deployed on the narrow streets of the historic walled city, as workers hosed pools of blood from the cobblestones, said an AFP reporter.

The body of the attacker, who died at scene, was carried away on a stretcher.

- 'Premeditated' attack -
Israel's Public Security Minister Omer Bar-Lev said the attacker was a Palestinian living in the Shuafat neighbourhood in east Jerusalem. 

"He was a member of Hamas, the political branch not the armed wing," Bar-Lev told Israel's Kan television channel, saying the gunman's wife had travelled abroad three days ago, while his son was also out of the country.

"It seems that this attack is premeditated," Bar-Lev said.

Police identified him as a 42-year-old east Jerusalem resident.

Hamas, in power in the Gaza Strip, identified the attacker as Fadi Abu Shkhaydam, congratulating him and hailing the "continuation" of the fight to "liberate" Jerusalem.

But Hamas did not specifically claim the attack, which came six months to the day since the end of an 11-day war in Gaza with Israel in May.

In a recent sermon delivered in a Jerusalem mosque viewed by AFP, Abu Shkhaydam accuses Israelis of being oppressors "financed by Satan and the United Arab Emirates", the Gulf monarchy that normalised ties with the Jewish state last year.

- Terror listing -
On Friday, Britain said it intended to follow the United States and European Union in placing an outright ban on Hamas as a terror group, saying it was not possible to distinguish between the Islamists' political and military wings.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog, on an official visit to Britain, said that "the fact the terrorist was from Hamas's 'political wing' compels the international community to recognise it as a terror group".

Attacks targeting Israeli security forces are common in the Old City as well as in the occupied West Bank. They are often carried out by individual young Palestinian men in so-called lone-wolf attacks.

On Wednesday, Israeli security forces shot dead a 16-year-old assailant who stabbed and wounded two police officers in the Old City.

"This is the second recent terrorist attack in Jerusalem," Bennett said, adding he had ordered the security forces to "be alert... over concern for copycat attacks".

The Jewish Hanukkah holidays begin on November 28.

Some 200,000 Israelis live in east Jerusalem, alongside 300,000 Palestinians.

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