A 6-year-old boy and a 20-year-old man were killed Friday in a car-ramming attack in Jerusalem. At least five other people were wounded in the attack at the entrance to the Ramot neighborhood of East Jerusalem, among them another child who was in critical condition.
The two victims were named as 6-year-old Yaakov Yisrael Fali and 20-year-old Alter Shlomo Lederman, a newly married yeshiva student.
Local media identified the attacker as 31-year-old Hussein Karaka, an Israeli citizen and resident of the Isawiya neighborhood in East Jerusalem who had rammed his vehicle into a bus stop. He was shot dead by an off-duty police officer at the scene, officials said.
A member of the ZAKA volunteer rescue service, Dovi Weinstern, said that “many families” had been waiting at the bus stop when the attack took place. He described the aftermath as a “a very difficult scene.”
“When I arrived there I saw a lot of commotion, difficult images of people and children dressed in Shabbat clothes lying near the station suffering from serious injuries, cries for help from all sides,” he said.
After the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ordered bolstered security forces in the area and the immediate arrest of suspects in the attacker’s inner circle. He also ordered the swift demolition of the attacker’s home.
The attack comes exactly two weeks after a Palestinian attacker shot dead seven people, including a 14-year-old boy, outside a synagogue in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Neve Yaakov.