Jerusalem: Israeli police arrested at least three Palestinian suspects Sunday in connection with a lethal shooting at a Jerusalem checkpoint, as security forces searched for the suspected shooter.
The shooter started shooting at a military checkpoint in east Jerusalem late Saturday, killing a female Israeli soldier and injuring three other soldiers, one of them seriously. The Israeli military recognized the soldier as 18-year-old Noa Lazar.
It was the most recent bloodshed in the deadliest violence in the region in seven years. It also came less than a day before Israel was to start celebrating the weeklong Sukkot holiday, a time when a huge number of Jews visit the holy city.
Police said a large force of officers, soldiers, and Shin Bet security agency agents were involved in the search to apprehend the Palestinian attacker.
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid offered condolences to Lazar’s family. “We will not be silent and we will not rest until we bring the abominable killers to justice,” he said.
The attack came hours after two Palestinian teenagers were killed during an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank. A day sooner, two other Palestinian teenagers, ages 14 and 17, were killed by Israeli fire in separate incidents somewhere else in the West Bank.
Rights groups blame Israeli forces for using excessive force in their dealings with the Palestinians, particularly young men, without being held accountable. The military says it contends with complex, life-threatening scenarios.
Israel captured east Jerusalem, along with the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war and attached the area in a move that is not recognized internationally. It considers the entire city, including east Jerusalem, home to the city’s most important holy sites, to be its capital. The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state with the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
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