According to Israeli police, a suspected “terror attack” happened early on Tuesday local time in East Jerusalem next to the Shimon Hatzadik tomb, injuring two persons.
According to a police statement, the department received a report of a firing at a vehicle in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Shimon Hatzadik, where tensions between Palestinians and Jewish settlers have been building recently.
In East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah district, which is primarily populated by Palestinians, sits the famous Shimon Hatzadik tomb.
Two people were “moderately injured,” according to medical officials and were transferred for further medical treatment, the police statement added.
“Police and Border Police officers are at the scene conducting searches for the suspect who fled the scene,” it continued.
In a follow-up statement, police said forces located a “Carlo” style submachine gun near the site of the shooting.
A spokesperson for the Magen David Adom (MDA) ambulance service the two injured men involved a 50-year-old male who was sent to be treated in Shaare Tzedek Hospital and a 48-year-old to Hadassah Mt. Scopus Hospital.
The attack comes amid escalating Israeli-Palestinian violence. Last year was the deadliest for both Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and for Israelis in nearly two decades, and this year is on pace to be worse.
Tensions have boiled over during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which coincided this year with the Jewish Passover holiday, after Israeli police twice raided the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, whose compound is also known as the Temple Mount – one of the most revered places in Islam and Judaism. Israeli police arrested hundreds whom they accused of barricading themselves inside the mosque and throwing fireworks and stones, leading to wide condemnations from the Arab and Muslim world.
The complex and the neighborhood where Tuesday’s shooting took place lies in East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as the capital of their future state and which most of the international community considers to be Israeli-occupied territory. Israel captured it from Jordan in a 1967 war and considers both East and West Jerusalem as its united, “eternal capital.”