NN ONLINE:
Footage from a dashboard camera captured people fleeing near a bus stopped at the roadside as gunfire rang out. Another clip showed the bus’s windshield and windows perforated by bullets.
“I suddenly heard the shots start… I felt like I was running for eternity,” said Ester Lugasi, who was wounded in the attack, speaking to Israeli television from a hospital. “I thought I was going to die.” The ambulance service identified five of the victims: a man in his 50s, a woman in her 50s, and three men in their 30s. It reported 11 additional injuries, with six people in serious condition from gunshot wounds.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar later announced that a sixth person had died and said the gunmen were Palestinians from the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned “any targeting of Palestinian and Israeli civilians.”
Two Palestinian militant groups offered praise for alleged attackers: Hamas lauded two “resistance fighters” it said carried out the assault, while Islamic Jihad also praised the shooter. Neither group claimed formal responsibility, however.
Speaking at the scene, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli forces were pursuing suspects who aided the attackers. Police reported that two assailants arrived by car and opened fire at a bus stop at Ramot Junction, an area on the edge of Jerusalem that Israel captured in 1967 and later annexed in a move not recognized by the United Nations and most countries. Authorities recovered several weapons, ammunition, and a knife at the scene. Reuters footage showed a heavy police presence in Ramot after the shooting. The ambulance service described seeing several victims lying on the road and sidewalk, with some unconscious.
The Israeli military said it deployed troops to assist law enforcement and conduct searches for suspects. It also indicated that soldiers were conducting operations in Ramallah, West Bank, to interrogate suspects and “thwart terrorism.”
Context from recent years includes: in October 2024, a pair of Palestinian attackers—one armed with a gun and the other with a knife—killed seven people in Tel Aviv; in November 2023, two Palestinian gunmen killed three people at a Jerusalem bus stop. Israeli security services have said attackers in the 2023 Jerusalem incident were linked to Hamas.
