Palestinian gunman opens fire on Jerusalem bus, injuring 8

A Palestinian gunman opened fire on a bus near Jerusalem’s Old City early Sunday, wounding eight people in an attack that came a week after violence erupted between Israel and militants in the Gaza Strip, police and medics said.

Two of the victims were in serious condition, including a pregnant woman with abdominal injuries and a man with gunshot wounds to the head and neck, according to the Israeli hospitals treating them.

The US Ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, tweeted that there were American citizens among the wounded. An embassy spokesman gave no further information or details.

US Senator Chuck Schumer said at a news conference on Sunday that three of the eight wounded in the attack were Americans from Brooklyn.

The shooting happened as the bus was waiting in a parking lot near David’s tomb on Mount Zion, just outside the walls of the Old City. Israeli media identified the alleged attacker as a 26-year-old Palestinian from East Jerusalem.

Israel Police said forces were dispatched to investigate the scene. Israeli security forces also entered the nearby Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan and pursued the suspected attacker.

Later Sunday, police said the suspected attacker had turned himself in. At a meeting of his cabinet on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said the alleged attacker was a Jerusalem resident who was operating alone during the shooting and had previously been detained by Israel.

The attack in Jerusalem was followed by a tense week between Israel and Palestinians in gaza and the West Bank.

Last weekend, Israeli planes launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip against the Islamic Jihad militant group, sparking three days of intense cross-border fighting. Islamic Jihad fired hundreds of rockets during the flare-up to retaliate for airstrikes that killed two of its commanders and other militants. Israel said the attack was intended to thwart threats by the group to respond to the arrest of one of its officers in the occupied West Bank.

The fighting, which ended in an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire, killed 49 Palestinians, including 17 children and 14 militants, and wounded several hundred. No Israeli was killed or seriously injured.

The militant Islamic group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, has remained on the sidelines.

A day after the ceasefire ended the worst fighting in Gaza in more than a year, Israeli forces killed three Palestinian militants and wounded dozens in a shootout that broke out during an arrest raid in the West Bank city of Nablus.