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Two people were wounded in a shooting attack in Jerusalem on Saturday, emergency services say, after a gunman killed at least seven people near a synagogue in the city on Friday.
The two men injured in the City of David area of Jerusalem on Saturday, one aged 22 and one in his 40s, are father and son, according to police.
A 13-year-old who police say shot and wounded the pair was “neutralised and injured” by “two passers-by carrying licensed weapons”.
The latest incident came just hours after Australia formally condemned Friday’s deadly synagogue attack.
“Australia unequivocally condemns the horrific terrorist attack that claimed the lives of at least seven worshippers in Jerusalem on Friday evening,” Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in a statement on Saturday evening.
“Terrorism and violence against civilians can never be justified. That such a cowardly and callous attack occurred on a day where we remember the atrocities of the Holocaust is utterly reprehensible.”
Senator Wong said the government is “deeply concerned with escalating violence in Israel and the Palestinian Territories” and called on “all sides to exercise restraint”.
Tensions in Israel and the Palestinian territories remain high after Friday’s shooting, which police chief Yaakov Shabtai described as “one of the worst terror attacks in the past few years”.
The shooter in that attack was also later killed by police forces, according to police.
“As a result of the shooting attack, the death of seven civilians was determined and three others were injured with additional degrees of injury,” police said.
Five of the shooting victims were pronounced dead at the scene, Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency rescue service said: four men and a woman. Five people were transported to hospitals, where another man and woman were declared dead. Among the wounded is a 15-year-old boy, the MDA said.
The attack occurred around 8.15pm local time on Friday, near a synagogue on Neve Yaakov Street, according to a police statement.
Shabtai said the gunman “started shooting at anyone that was in his way. He got in his car and started a killing spree with a pistol at short range”.
He then fled the scene in a vehicle and was killed after a shootout with police forces, police said.
Police identified the gunman as a 21-year-old resident of East Jerusalem, saying in a statement that he appeared to have acted alone. East Jerusalem is a predominantly Palestinian area of the city, which was captured by Israel in 1967.
Friday’s incident came one day after the deadliest day for Palestinians in the West Bank in over a year, according to CNN records.
On Thursday, Israeli forces killed nine Palestinians and wounded several others in the West Bank city of Jenin, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, prompting the Palestinian Authority to suspend security coordination with Israel.
A tenth Palestinian was killed that day in what Israel Police called a “violent disturbance” near Jerusalem.
Prime Minister urge against revenge attacks
Referring to Saturday’s attack, a community leader said the 13-year-old suspected shooter knew a 16-year-old Palestinian who died of gunshot wounds a day earlier.
Jawad Siam, director of the Silwanic non-profilt organisation in East Jerusalem, told CNN the suspect’s family denied their 13-year-old son was responsible for the Saturday attack, which happened close to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Silwan, East Jerusalem.
According to Siam, the 13-year-old suspect was a neighbour of a 16-year-old Palestinian who died of gunshot wounds in hospital overnight Friday. The 16-year-old was shot Wednesday by Israeli police.
Of the two wounded Saturday, the 22-year-old man is now in a serious but stable condition, anesthetised and ventilated in the intensive care unit, while his 47-year-old father is in a moderate and stable condition.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged people against revenge attacks on Friday night.
“I call on the people not to take the law into their own hands. For that purpose we have an army, police and security forces. They act and will act according to the cabinet instructions,” he said.
Meanwhile, the European Union on Saturday urged Israel to only use lethal force as a “last resort”.
Source: 9News
