5 Americans among victims of East Jerusalem shooting: reports

Five Americans — including a family from Brooklyn — were among the eight victims of a Sunday morning mass shooting in Jerusalem, according to reports and officials.

Two of the United States citizens are being cared for at the Hadassah Medical Center, and three at Shaare Zedek Medical Center, CNN reported.

Four of the five American victims were part of a family from Williamsburg, Brooklyn — home to a large Hasidic Jewish population — who arrived in Israel on Wednesday, according to Yeshiva World News.

Early Sunday, a gunman opened fire at a bus near Jerusalem’s Old City, wounding eight Israelis, police and medics said.

Two of the victims were in serious condition, including a pregnant woman with abdominal injuries and a man with gunshot wounds to the head and neck, according to Israeli hospitals.

The shooting occured as the bus was sitting in a parking lot near the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site. 

The attack in Jerusalem comes after last weekend Israeli aircraft carried out an offensive in the Gaza Strip targeting the militant group Islamic Jihad, igniting three days of intense cross-border fighting.

Islamic Jihad in turn fired hundreds of rockets during the flare-up, which killed two of its commanders and other militants. Israel said the attack was aimed at preventing threats from the group to respond to the arrest of one of its officials in the occupied West Bank.

Forty-nine Palestinians, including 17 children and 14 militants, were killed, and several hundred were injured in the fighting, which ended with an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire.

No Israeli was killed or seriously injured.

In response to the Sunday shooting, US ambassador to Israel, Thomas Nides, posted, “Deeply saddened to confirm that Americans were injured in this attack.”

“I’ve spoken with the families and will keep them in my prayers,” he added in the Twitter post.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she was “horrified” by the shooting.

“I’m horrified by the terror attack in Jerusalem, and by the news that a family of New Yorkers has been impacted,” she tweeted.

“My team is making contact with @StateDept to assist however possible. We condemn terror and stand with the Israeli people as they seek peace.”

The alleged shooter is an Israeli citizen from East Jerusalem who was born in 1996, CNN reported, citing a security source. He is a Palestinian resident of Silwan, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, the New York Times reported, citing an Israel broadcaster.

The suspect surrendered to authorities hours later, Israeli Police Commissioner Yaakov Shabtai said.

A spokesperson for Hamas commended the “heroic operation” against the “arrogance of the occupation’s soldiers and extremist settlers,” according to the Washington Post, but the group did not claim responsibility for it.

With Post wires