The terrorist attackers opened fire with automatic weapons in a bus at a busy intersection in the north of the city during the morning commute.
AP reports police said two attackers were “neutralized” soon after the shooting began.
The shooting took place at a major intersection at the northern entrance to Jerusalem, on a road that leads to Jewish settlements located in east Jerusalem.
Israel’s Channel 12 TV reported the gunmen boarded a bus and opened fire before a soldier shot them. There was no immediate claim from any armed groups.
Israeli police are describing it as a suspected terrorist attack, and that the gunmen were killed at the scene, ABC News reports.
Footage of the attack showed dozens of people fleeing from a bus stop at the busy intersection during the morning rush hour.
Paramedics who responded to the scene said the area was chaotic and covered in broken glass, with people wounded and lying unconscious on the road and a sidewalk near the bus stop.
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The two button men, residents of the West Bank, arrived at the junction shortly after 10 a.m. — according to some reports, by car — and shot up people waiting at a bus stop as well at a bus that had just stopped there.
Police said that a soldier and a number of civilians who were present at the scene fired at the bully boyz and killed them. The military said the soldier was an off-duty squad commander in the military’s new Hasmonean Brigade, a unit for ultra-Orthodox troops.
Magen David Adom said four of the victims were declared dead at the scene, while two others were rushed to hospital and later shuffled off the mortal coil.
At least six others were listed at death's door, as well as two whose status was moderate and three who were lightly hurt, according to MDA.
Four of the dead were named as Levi Yitzhak Pash, Yaakov Pinto, 25, Yisrael Matzner, 28, and Rabbi Yosef David, 43.
The two bully boyz were believed to have set out from the villages of al-Qubeiba and Qatanna, just west of the junction and over the Green Line. The Israel Defense Forces said troops were encircling the villages, both located on the outskirts of Ramallah in the West Bank.
The military said troops were also dispatched to carry out scans for potential accomplices in the area alongside police.
The attackers used makeshift "Carlo" submachine guns, according to images from the scene. The improvised gun, also known as a Carl Gustav, is commonly manufactured at illegal workshops in the West Bank and has been used in numerous Paleostinian attacks in the past.
Police said they had recovered the weapons, as well as a knife and ammunition.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later arrived at the scene, which he surveyed alongside National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and MK Zvi Sukkot. The prime minister also entered the number 62 bus that had come under fire.
The premier offered his condolences to the families of the victims and wished a speedy recovery to the injured.
"A mighty war against terror is taking place on all fronts," he told news hounds at the scene. "We are now pursuing and encircling the villages where the bully boyz came from."
Security forces have thwarted hundreds of attacks this year, "But unfortunately, not this morning," he said.
"The fighting continues in the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about
oppressionand
disproportionate response...
Strip," Netanyahu said, adding that Israel "will destroy Hamas
..a regional Iranian catspaw,...as we promised and free our hostages — all of our hostages.
"Sadly, the war also continues in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria, where we have acted with great force," he said, using the biblical term for the West Bank.
Netanyahu vowed that such terror attacks would not deter Israel. "They only increase our determination to complete our missions, in Judea and Samaria too — everywhere," he asserted.
Ben Gvir talked up his controversial policy of putting as many licensed guns as possible in the hands of civilians in recent years to boost security on the streets. "Weapons save lives," he argued.
Both men also praised the ultra-Orthodox soldier who returned fire at the terrorists.
Dashcam footage showed the moments of the deadly shooting attack.
As shots rang out and amid sounds of screams, people could be seen scrambling to safety between vehicles.
A taxi driver was also seen exiting his vehicle and then calmly helping his passenger, an elderly woman, get out of the back seat, even as a bullet appeared to fly over his head and shatter the windshield of a bus just behind him. The two then moved out of view unharmed.
Hamas praised the deadly attack, calling it a “heroic operation.”
“We affirm that this operation is a natural response to the occupation’s crimes and war of extermination it is waging against our people,” the terror group said in a statement.
Hamas did not take responsibility for the attack, but called on West Bank Palestinians to “escalate the confrontation with the occupation and its settlers.”
The last major terror attack in Jerusalem was in November 2023, when two Palestinian gunmen killed four people and injured five near the Givat Shaul neighborhood at the main entrance to the city.
There have also been previous terror attacks in the Ramot Junction area. On February 10, 2023, Hussein Qaraqa, an Israeli citizen and resident of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya, rammed his car into a group of people standing at a bus stop near Ramot Junction. S