A Palestinian man about to begin a prison sentence for assaulting police killed two Israelis and injured eight others in a Jerusalem shooting that authorities described as a terrorist attack.
A gunman opened fire from his car on people waiting at a light-rail station in the capital Sunday morning, then shot another woman as she was driving her car, police spokeswoman Luba Samri said in a text message. Police on motorcycles followed the assailant as he fled toward an Arab neighborhood of the city and shot him to death, Samri said.
A woman, 60, and a man, 30, died of their wounds, a spokesman for Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency service said. Ha’aretz reported that the 30-year-old man was a police officer.
The attack comes close to the one-year anniversary of the Palestinian “stabbing intifada,” a wave of knife, gun and car-ramming attacks carried out mostly by individuals unaffiliated with the main Palestinian militant groups.
Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that governs the Gaza Strip, claimed credit for what it called a “heroic operation.” The group identified the shooter as Misbah Abu Sbeih, 39, from Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood.
Abu Sbeih, who had served time in Israeli jail for incitement to violence, was due to begin a four-month prison sentence later Sunday for assaulting an Israeli police offer in 2013, the Palestinian Ma’an news agency reported.