Cops shoot, arrest Palestinian suspected of planning attack in Jerusalem

Police shot and arrested a Palestinian man suspected of planning to carry out a terror attack in Jerusalem on Sunday, officials said.

The Shin Bet security service said it received intelligence that the suspect, who has not yet been identified, was on his way to conduct an attack.

Some local residents of the Beit Safafa neighborhood in East Jerusalem, bordering the street in the Pat neighborhood where the man was arrested, disputed the statement, saying he was a sick man and posed no danger.

During the arrest, officers said they felt they were in danger and shot the man in the thigh, police said in a statement.

The suspect was taken to Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center in moderate condition, a hospital spokesperson said.

Neither police nor the Shin Bet would specify what type of attack the man was suspected of planning. However, pictures from the scene showed officers tackling the suspect to the ground on Berl Locker Street in the south of the city, something they would not likely do if the man was suspected of carrying explosives.

According to Channel 2 news, the suspect was approximately 50 years old. An eyewitness told the television channel that the man had a pacemaker installed recently and was released from the hospital earlier in the day on Sunday.

The Beit Safafa incident came a day after a man was lightly injured in a Jerusalem stabbing attack.

On Saturday afternoon, a female Palestinian assailant tried to stab an ultra-Orthodox man and, failing to do that, stabbed another person, reportedly an East Jerusalem resident, injuring him lightly, according to security footage released by police.

In the clip, the attacker, a 29-year-old mother of five from East Jerusalem, can be seen crossing a street before pulling out a knife and taking a few swipes at the ultra-Orthodox man, who dodges the weapon and manages to get away. The footage does not show the stabbing of the victim, who according to some reports in the Hebrew-language media was a resident of East Jerusalem wearing a shirt with Hebrew writing, whom she mistook for a Jew.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIMe2g7fo80

The man, who was lightly wounded in the arm as a result of the attack, was taken to Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus for treatment before being released.

Police said the attacker was overpowered and arrested by police officers at the scene after stabbing the man. She was then taken for questioning.

Hebrew-language media reported that the woman’s husband was arrested following the attack and that police raided the couple’s home in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sur Baher.

Over the past two years, the Old City, and the Damascus Gate area in particular, have seen several attacks by Palestinians, and in two cases by Jordanian nationals.

Since September 2015, mainly Palestinian assailants have killed 48 Israelis, two visiting Americans, a Palestinian man and a British student, mainly in stabbing, shooting and vehicular attacks. In that time, some 259 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire, a majority of them attackers, according to authorities.

Agencies contributed to this report.