BREAKING NEWS: Two Israelis killed in car-ramming attack

Two people, one of them a child, were killed in a car-ramming attack on a bus stop in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem on Friday, Israeli authorities said.

The attack, which comes amid spiralling violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this year, was condemned by Washington as “unconscionable”. A police spokesperson said that at around 1:30 pm (1130 GMT) the driver of the car, a 31-year-old resident of Issawiya, a Palestinian neighbourhood of east Jerusalem, hit “at high speed (…) innocent people waiting at the bus stop”.

“As a result of the ramming, there are two dead and another five injured,” an Israeli police statement added.

“The suspect was neutralised on the spot” in Ramot, a Jewish settler neighbourhood of east Jerusalem, the police said, describing it as a “terror” attack.

Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek hospital said one of the dead was 20 years old, while police later said the child was aged six.

A hospital spokesperson identified the 20-year-old as Alter Shlomo Lederman, a yeshiva student who died from his injuries shortly after being admitted.

The spokesperson added that a second child, aged eight, was in a critical condition, with doctors “fighting to keep him alive”.

An AFP journalist at the scene of the attack saw a blue car that had crashed into a bus stop. A pink child’s doll was in the debris nearby.

Israel’s far-right Public Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was taken to task at the scene by protesters for failing to live up to his election promises to restore security.

He reiterated his desire to “implement death penalty legislation for terrorists”.

A statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he had “decided to take immediate action to seal and demolish the home of the terrorist”.

Late last month, an attack killed six Israelis and a Ukrainian outside a synagogue in east Jerusalem, a day after the deadliest Israeli army raid in years in the occupied West Bank claimed 10 lives.

The synagogue attack on the Jewish Sabbath was the deadliest targeting Israeli civilians in more than a decade.

– ‘Crazy’ –

Dozens of onlookers gathered at the scene of Friday’s attack, many wearing the black and white clothes of ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Nehurai Dery, who runs a construction company and had been going to visit his father in Ramot, told AFP: “It’s crazy what’s happening.

“The government should (find) a solution. But the government doesn’t want a solution. The government here, the government in Gaza, in Ramallah, they want the division.”

The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad praised the attack as a “heroic” operation and a “natural and legitimate response to the crimes of the occupation”.

UN Middle East peace envoy Tor Wennesland said: “Such horrific attacks and their glorification are fuelling an endless cycle of bloodshed and should be condemned by all.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken strongly condemned the car ramming. “The deliberate targeting of innocent civilians is repugnant and unconscionable,” he said in a statement.

Friday’s attack followed a week of violence in the West Bank.

On Thursday, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian near the city of Hebron, the Palestinian health ministry said, after what the army called a “stabbing attack”.

On Tuesday, troops shot dead a Palestinian teenager in the city of Nablus, the health ministry said, with the Israeli military saying he had fired on soldiers.

A day earlier, Israeli forces killed five suspected Palestinian gunmen in a raid in Jericho, after a days-long search for suspects in a shooting at a restaurant.

– Deadly year –

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has seen at least 43 Palestinians — including attackers, militants and civilians, killed this year.

Eight Israeli civilians, including two children, and one Ukrainian have been killed over the same period, according to an AFP tally based on official statements.

The US secretary of state visited Israel and the West Bank last month, and in talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders urged both sides to prevent further bloodshed.

Last year was the deadliest year in the West Bank since the United Nations started tracking fatalities in the territory in 2005.