Despite the clashes with Gaza and the regular clashes on the esplanade of the Mosques, this modus operandi had not been used since 2016 in Jerusalem. This Wednesday morning, two bomb attacks in bus stops killed a teenager and left about fifteen injured in the Holy City. “Different explosive charges were placed in the two places. We suspect it was a combined attack,” Israel Police said in a statement. The bombs were activated remotely, according to a security source.
A first explosion at a bus stop outside Jerusalem injured 12, four of them seriously, and a second, once the police and emergency services were on the scene, demolished a bus and injured three at another nearby station , according to rescuers. Israeli police called the two blasts “attacks” and later claimed that one person had died of their injuries.
“Terrorism does not wait”
According to the Israeli authorities, the person killed in the first attack is named Aryeh Shechopek. Local sources told AFP that it is a teenager of 15 or 16, whose name on the Canadian passport would be Aryeh Schupak. Canada’s Ambassador to Israel, Lisa Stadelbauer, said on Twitter that she was “heartbroken” by the death of this “young Canadian” in a “condemnable terrorist attack in Jerusalem”.
The funeral of the teenager, living in Jerusalem and waiting for the bus to go to his Talmudic school, is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. “It was about a boy who had never done anything to anyone and was murdered simply because he is Jewish,” said outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid.
The latter held an emergency meeting with the heads of the security services at the army headquarters in Tel Aviv and informed his designated successor Benjamin Netanyahu, winner of the November 1 legislative elections, of the security situation. “We must form the government as soon as possible because terrorism does not wait,” said Wednesday Itamar Ben Gvir, a tenor of the far right who is eyeing the Ministry of Public Security, calling on the authorities to carry out “targeted killings” of suspected terrorists.
Without claiming responsibility for the attacks in Jerusalem, the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, in power in the Gaza Strip, “welcomed” them, considering them in a statement as “the price of crimes and aggressions” by Israel “against our people”. . Overnight, a Palestinian was killed by Israeli forces during clashes in Nablus, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.