Jerusalem on High Alert After Dual Terrorist Attacks
Update
10:35 a.m.: Jerusalem is on high alert after a second attack occurred just moments after a Palestinian construction worker drove his vehicle into a city bus and killed one pedestrian.
According to Jerusalem police chief Yossi Pariente, an Israeli soldier was "shot at close range by a man dressed in black” on Mount Scopus on the border of East and West Jerusalem. A manhunt is underway.
Police heighten security in Jerusalem after 2 terrorist attacks today. Units mobilized in different areas & Search continuing for terrorist.
— Micky Rosenfeld (@MickyRosenfeld) August 4, 2014
The soldier is reportedly in critical condition.
Original Post
After nearly a month of conflict, the battlefield in the war between Israel and Hamas, along with other terror groups in Gaza, expanded into Jerusalem with a tractor attack on a city bus in Jerusalem. One pedestrian was killed and six others were injured.
According to Reuters, a Palestinian construction worker drove his vehicle into a pedestrian and smashed into a bus in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in the city, causing it to flip over. Police shot the driver and have called the incident a terrorist attack.
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Israeli police call incident in Jerusalem "terror attack." Tractor struck passenger bus. tractor driver killed by police. Bus driver injured
— Anderson Cooper (@andersoncooper) August 4, 2014
Attacks using cars and tractors are not entirely uncommon in Jerusalem, with a spate of them during the Second Intifada and a few as recently as 2008.
One man critically injured by alleged bulldozer terrorist ramming Jerusalem bus, in first suspected lone-wolf attack in the city in years
— Noga Tarnopolsky (@NTarnopolsky) August 4, 2014
Hamas spox issues statement of approval for Jerusalem tractor attack & encourages more of the same. "No permission required." v @galberger
— Lisa Goldman (@lisang) August 4, 2014
"From the moment fighting started in the south, we realised such an incident of a lone attacker can happen and such tractor attacks are familiar in Jerusalem," Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch said on Channel 2 television, according to Reuters. "(The driver's) whole family is being interrogated. We want to know who sent him, if he was acting alone, whether he belonged to a network - all those things are being checked."
Israel was said to be submitting to a partial, unilateral ceasefire on Monday while troops were redeployed in the southern Gaza Strip to continue demolishing tunnels. As Hamas rocket fire continued, an Israeli airstrike reportedly hit a house in Gaza City not long after the ceasefire was to begin, killing one and wounding dozens.
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Elsewhere, according to the Times of Israel, there seem to be competing efforts to secure a lasting ceasefire with Palestinian and Egyptian delegates meeting in Cairo to work on a plan and the United States and Qatar also together again to work on proposal.
This article was originally published at http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/08/two-dead-after-attack-in-jerusalem/375521/
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