At least one dead and 15 injured in two bombing attacks in Jerusalem
Eva Deschamps / November 23, 2022
Two explosions, considered attacks by Israeli authorities, killed at least one person and injured 15 others Wednesday morning in Jerusalem, according to rescue workers.
At least one person was killed in two explosions at bus stations in Jerusalem that left some 15 people injured Wednesday morning, an Israeli police spokeswoman told AFP.
The man, who was not immediately identified, was seriously injured in one of the two explosions, described as "attacks" by the police. He succumbed to his injuries in Shaare Zedek hospital.
An AFP photographer at the scene of the first explosion said the blast pierced a metal fence behind the bus stop, with an electric scooter and a hat lying on the ground.
And while police were at the scene, another explosion was heard a short distance away, according to the photographer.
In the wake of deadly attacks in Israel last March and April and others that followed, the Israeli army conducted more than 2,000 raids in the West Bank. These raids, and the clashes sometimes associated with them, have left more than 125 Palestinians dead, the highest death toll in seven years, according to the UN.
Without claiming responsibility for the Jerusalem attacks, the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which is in power in the Gaza Strip, "welcomed" them, considering them in a statement as "the price of Israel's crimes and aggressions" "against our people.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Israeli army said that the remains of an 18-year-old Israeli civilian who died Tuesday in a "serious road accident" in the occupied West Bank had been "abducted" from the hospital in Jenin, a stronghold of armed factions in the northern West Bank, where he was pronounced dead.
There was no immediate claim to the kidnapping, but local sources told AFP that Palestinian fighters in a nearby refugee camp were now in possession of the body.
Abductions of Israelis, dead or alive, have been used in the past as a bargaining chip by armed groups to demand the release of prisoners or the return of bodies of Palestinians killed in clashes and held by Israel.