By Ebi Kesiena
A militant of the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement opened fire on Sunday 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.
“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,” he added.
The wounded, who included two civilians and two police officers, were rushed to Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital. One of them, a man in his 30s, died of his injuries, medical sources said without giving further details.
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 down large pools of blood from the cobblestones, said an AFP reporter.
However, the body of the attacker, who died at scene, was carried away on a stretcher.
