Two Israeli women died of their wounds early today after being shot in response to Israel’s killing of four Palestinian militants the day before.
The unidentified women, aged 78 and 56, were critically wounded when a Palestinian gunman appeared during afternoon rush hour on west Jerusalem's main shopping thoroughfare, Jaffa Road, spraying shoppers and workers with bullets and wounding 39 people.
Their deaths bring to 1,157 the number of the people killed since the start of the 16-month intifada or Palestinian uprising, comprising 885 Palestinians and 250 Israelis.
A spokesman for Haddassah Ein Kerem hospital said 14 of the injured were still hospitalised, two in serious condition.
Police shot the gunman dead.
The attack occurred half way between the Sbarro pizzeria, where 15 people were killed in an August suicide bombing, and the entrance to the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall, where two young suicide bombers killed 11 people in December.
Yesterday’s assailant was a 24-year-old member of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of the Fatah faction according to a caller claiming to represent the group.
The shooting spree came shortly after the Islamic radical group Hamas threatened "total war" on the Jewish state for killing four of its militants in a dawn raid in the West Bank's main town of Nablus.
AFP