JERUSALEM: Two people, including a child, were killed on Friday in a car ramming attack on a bus stop in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.

The attack comes amid spiralling violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this year.

“As a result of the ramming, there are two dead and another five injured,” an Israeli police statement said.

“The suspect was neutralised on the spot” in Ramot, a Jewish settlement in east Jerusalem, the police said, describing it as a “terror” attack.

Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek hospital said one of the dead was 20 years old, while police later said the child was aged six.

A hospital spokesperson identified the 20-year-old as Alter Shlomo Lederman, a yeshiva student who died from his injuries shortly after being admitted.

The spokesperson added that an eight-year-old child remained in a critical condition, with doctors “fighting to keep him alive”.

An eyewitness saw a blue car that had crashed into a bus stop. A pink doll was in the debris nearby.

Israel’s far-right Public Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was taken to task at the scene by protesters for failing to live up to his election promises to restore security.

A statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netan­yahu’s office said he had “decided to take immediate action to seal and demolish the home of the terrorist”.

Late last month, an attack killed six Israelis and a Ukrainian outside a synagogue in east Jerusalem, a day after the deadliest Israeli army raid in years in the occupied West Bank claimed 10 lives.

The synagogue attack on the Jewish Sabbath was the deadliest targeting Israeli civilians in more than a decade.

Friday’s attack followed a week of violence in the West Bank.

On Thursday, Israeli forces shot dead a Palest­inian near Hebron, the Palestinian health ministry said, after what the army called a “stabbing attack”.

On Tuesday, troops shot dead a Palestinian teenager in Nablus, the health ministry said, with the Israeli military saying he had fired on soldiers.

A day earlier, Israeli forces killed five Palest­inians in a raid in Jericho in the Jordan Valley, after a days-long search for suspects in a shooting at a restaurant.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has seen 43 Pales­tinians killed this year.

Eight Israeli civilians, including two children, and one Ukrainian have been killed over the same period.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Israel and the West Bank last month, and in talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders urged both sides to prevent further bloodshed.

Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 war and later annexed it in a move not recognised internationally.

Published in Dawn, February 11th, 2023