OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (Agencies)
Israeli police went on high alert on Saturday after a Palestinian gunman opened fire on policemen in the Old City in East Jerusalem, wounding two of them before fleeing on foot.
"Our forces have been placed on high alert after the attack on Friday night which wounded two Israeli policemen, and which we believe was a terrorist attack," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP.
"One (policeman) is in critical condition and the other was seriously wounded," he said, adding that both had been rushed to a nearby hospital.
Police were treating the incident, which left one officer in a serious condition with a gunshot wound to the head, as a "terror" attack although on Saturday they were still hunting the assailant, who fired from a Muslim cemetery under the city wall.
The attack took place near the Lion's Gate, one of several entrances through the 400 year-old walls that surround the Old City which opens onto mostly Arab East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel in the 1967 war and annexed soon thereafter.
Police returned fire before the attacker fled through a nearby Muslim cemetery, Rosenfeld said.
Police have since launched a manhunt focused on the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Wadi Joz and other nearby Palestinian villages.
The Old City, containing holy sites sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims, every year attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims and tourists from all over the world.
The attack came just over a week after a Palestinian killed three Israeli motorists during a bulldozer rampage on one of Jewish West Jerusalem's busiest streets, adding to tensions with residents of occupied Arab East Jerusalem who have free access to Israel, unlike Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. |
