Two Israeli police officers have been wounded in a shooting in occupied East Jerusalem and the suspected gunman was killed, officials say, as tensions spike amid deadly attacks on Gaza.
An armed 20-year-old man from the city’s eastern sector “opened fire at police officers who were standing in front of the” Shalem police station near the Old City, police spokesman Dean Elsdunne said on Thursday.
The AFP news agency said its photographer saw what appeared to be a dead body outside the police station with dozens of officers in the area.
One of the officers was in serious condition and the other was lightly wounded, police said, citing medics.
As the alleged gunman “attempted to flee the scene”, officers “managed to … successfully neutralise him [and] he was declared deceased at the scene”, said Elsdunne.
Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel-Hamid, reporting from West Jerusalem, said there was an exchange of gunfire near the police station.
“The Israeli police say the attacker has been ‘neutralised’. Now, that’s the word they use to say that indeed he has been killed,” she said.
At least 33 Palestinians have been killed in occupied East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank in violence related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since Saturday, AFP said.
More than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli air strikes and artillery fire on the blockaded Gaza Strip since Saturday, according to official figures, while at least 1,300 have died on the Israeli side.
Al Jazeera’s Abdel-Hamid said there is widespread anger in occupied East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank over the Gaza assault.
“This is one of the challenges for the [Israeli] prime minister and his emergency unity cabinet because with every day that passes, those pictures of huge explosions in Gaza, not very far from here, about an hour-and-a-half drive, have created a mood among the Palestinians of increased anger,” she said, referring to the formation of a unity government in Israel to tackle the ongoing war.
Abdel-Hamid called it a “very complicated situation”, adding that Thursday’s attack on the police station could be followed by reprisal attacks by the illegal Israeli settlers in occupied East Jerusalem.
“And then that becomes a vicious circle,” she said.
