Man kills pregnant ex-wife, shoots himself, in Jerusalem’s Gilo neighborhood

A man shot and killed his pregnant ex-wife and then critically wounded himself in an apparent suicide attempt in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo on Thursday.

From an initial investigation, police suspect that the two met outside the woman’s residence, after which the man shot her with his licensed handgun, which he owns due to his work as a security guard.

He then attempted to take his own life.

The victim was 25 and recently remarried, according to the Michal Sela Forum, which combats domestic violence.

The Ynet news site cited relatives of the victim as saying the divorce “wasn’t ugly” and that the woman, who worked at a nursery, had become religious and remarried through a matchmaker.

Paramedics who arrived at the scene of the shooting in Jerusalem’s Gilo neighborhood found the pair, both in their mid-20s, lying on the ground unconscious and suffering from gunshot wounds.

The woman, who was in critical condition, succumbed to her injuries while en route to the Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital, Hebrew news outlets reported.

As of Thursday night, the man was in critical condition after being brought to Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center.

Law enforcement said that there had been no previous complaints of violence regarding the two.

So far this year, 24 women and one child have been killed in domestic disputes in Israel, according to the Michal Sela forum, which tracks violence against women.

That compares to 17 women and one child throughout all of 2024.

The Israel Women’s Network condemned the apparent murder-suicide and called for more to be done to prevent violence against women.

“Every eight days on average here, a woman is murdered, and we continue to call it a ‘shocking incident’ and move on,” the group said. “Words cannot suffice any longer, we demand action.”

It demanded that something be done to stop the “criminal negligence of the National Security Ministry” — headed by far-right minister Itamar Ben Gvir — “which has failed in its job of protecting women from violence in Israel.”

The “No. to Violence against Women” group said in response to the deadly violence that, “The ongoing war against our home has become a war within the home. The war and the security pressure raise tension, anxiety, and stress, and the situation is a risk factor for violence in general, and domestic violence in particular. We must not accept this reality as fate.״

Similar incidents of suspected or confirmed murder-suicides have occurred across Israel in recent months.

In April, a 13-year-old boy found both of his parents lifeless in their Jerusalem home, in an incident police suspected was a murder-suicide, with the husband shooting his wife with a gun he held a legal permit for.

Then in June, a 51-year-old woman was found stabbed to death in an apartment in the central Israel city of Bat Yam, leading to an hours-long standoff between police and her partner on the roof of the building, before he jumped off the roof to his death.

The partner was suspected of having killed the woman.

Some two weeks later, a man suspected of murdering his elderly mother died after jumping from a roof in Rehovot.