Eight Wounded as Terrorist Gunman Attacks Bus Near Western Wall

JERUSALEM—A terrorist gunman opened fire on a bus carrying Jewish worshippers near the Western Wall late Saturday night, seriously wounding two riders, including a 26-weeks-along pregnant woman, who was forced to deliver an emergency birth. Following an hours-long manhunt, police said that the gunman turned himself in along with the gun he used in the shooting. The woman and newborn are in serious but stable condition.

A family of four from the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, N.Y., who had arrived in Israel this past Wednesday were also on the bus when it was attacked. Two members of the family were shot, and two others escaped serious injury. The father of the family is in critical condition and is on life support.

“I stopped the bus at the King David’s Tomb station and the bus was full,” the bus driver, Daniel Kanievsky, told Kan New public radio. “We opened the ramp for someone on a wheelchair and then the shooting started. Everyone got down on the floor, screaming. I tried to escape, but the bus couldn’t drive with the ramp open.”

Menachem Palace, a visiting student at a Chabad-Lubavitch yeshivah in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn who was shot and lightly wounded, described the attack to reporters gathered outside the Shaare Zedek Medical Center after surgery to remove the bullet.

“I sat right next to the window and heard a gunshot. I looked and saw the whole window was shattered,” recounted Palace.

“So I quickly ducked, and I saw I had blood everywhere over here,” he said, pointing to his shoulder. “Everyone was ducking and screaming ‘Shema Yisrael’ … it was a pretty scary sight.”

“Because of all the adrenaline, I didn’t know I had a bullet inside me,” he added.

"I heard a 'boom' and I could see that the window was shattered," said student Menachem Pallace, who was shot and lightly wounded in the attack.

Two brothers from Israel who were wounded in the shooting attack—Elazar, 19, and Dovi, 16— were reunited after being hospitalized, according to their older brother, Yair.

“My two brothers were together waiting for the bus … Elazar helped a woman get on the bus, and my 16-and-a-half-year-old brother Dovi was still at the bus stop when the shooting started. Both were hit in the shoulder and were evacuated,” their brother said.

“When the incident happened, Dovi called and told us that they were both hit by a bullet, that he was conscious, and that he was quite well. It calmed us down. He even had time to say that Elazar was helping to treat the wounded at the scene because he is an MDA [Magen Dovid Adom] paramedic,” he said.

“We were shocked and immediately left for where they were hospitalized. Now, Dovi has arrived, and we have reunited,” said Yair from Hadassah Mount Scopus hospital.

Yair said the doctors told him that if the bullet had hit Elazar a few centimeters over, “he would not be alive.”

“It is a real miracle,” he said.

There are requests for prayers for Shea Tzvi ben Surel and Yehoshua Hersh ben Sara.