A South African immigrant was killed and four other people, including two border police officers, were injured on Sunday in a terrorist attack carried out by a Hamas member in Jerusalem’s Old City at the foot of the Arab market descending to the Western Wall.
Two of the wounded have sustained serious injuries and were taken to Hadassah-University Medical Center at Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus by Magen David Adom rescue services, while the fatality, named Eliyahu David Kay (26) has sustained serious head wounds and was later pronounced dead.
Due to the risk of further attacks, Israeli PM Naftali Bennett ordered security to be boosted, calling people to be on “heightened alert”.
While the attack was the second in less than a week, Kay is the first Israeli civilian killed by Palestinian violence in more than six months, since the 11-day conflict with terror groups in the Gaza Strip in May, when 12 civilians in Israel were killed.
The gunman was a Hamas terrorist, a 42-year-old Palestinian Fadi Abu Shkhaydam from East Jerusalem, who opened fire in Jerusalem’s Old City but was instantly killed by two female police officers that rushed to the scene near the Chain Gate, one of the Temple Mount’s entrances and opened fire towards the attacker.
According to Israeli authorities, Abu Shkhaydam was is affiliated with Hamas’ political wing and regularly prayed at the al-Aqsa mosque in the Old City, where he arrived on Sunday carrying Beretta M12 – a standardized weapon that is uncommon in Israel – and started shooting.
Praising the attack as “heroic operation,” Hamas has confirmed that Abu Shkhaydam, who lived in the Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem, was their member and local Hamas leader.
Israeli security forces later raided the Rashidiya school where Shkhaydam taught religious studies, and his home in east Jerusalem, where they’ve arrested his daughter, brother, and nephew while his wife has reportedly escaped abroad three days before.
Later on Sunday evening, demonstrators expressing support for Abu Shkhaydam at a rally the refugee camp of Shuafat chanting, among other things, chanted, among other things, that millions of martyrs are going to Jerusalem.
Nearly at the same time, hundreds of youth from a number of right-wing movements were joined by Religious Zionist MKs Orit Struk and Simcha Rotman in a protest march from the Jaffa Gate to the Western Wall.
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