JERUSALEM — An Israeli soldier in uniform waiting at an eastern Jerusalem bus stop was shot in the stomach in what police said was likely a terror attack.
The soldier, in his 20s, reportedly is hospitalized in critical condition following Monday’s attack near the Hebrew University campus in Mount Scopus.
Less than three hours earlier, a tractor attack near the border between western and eastern Jerusalem left one man dead. Police called the incident a terrorist attack.
In the shooting, the gunman, reportedly dressed in black, shot the soldier and ran to a motorcycle before fleeing the scene in the direction of the Arab town of Wadi Joz.
Jerusalem Police Chief Yossi Pariente told reporters the incident was likely a terror attack.
Police have heightened security in Jerusalem in the wake of the two attacks.
In the earlier incident, a tractor rammed a bus and a car, killing one, in Jerusalem.
Police shot and killed the driver of the industrial digger, reportedly a Palestinian man, in the incident Monday on Shmuel HaNavi Street, in north-center Jerusalem.
The tractor hit and crushed a pedestrian, who later died, before hitting a car and overturning a bus. The bus was empty, except for the driver, at the time. The drivers of the bus and the car were lightly injured.
The pedestrian was later identified as Rabbi Avraham Waltz, 29, a father of five and a member of the Toldot Aharon Hasidic community.
Video taken of the incident by a bystander and broadcast on Israel’s Channel 2 showed the tractor ramming the bus repeatedly until it toppled.
The driver was identified on Twitter as Mohamad Jabis, in his 20s, of the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabel Mukaber. He reportedly worked on the construction site from where the digger was taken. Pro-Palestinian tweets accused Israel Police of shooting and killing Jabis for being involved in a simple traffic accident.
Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch in an interview on Channel 2 did not name the tractor driver but indicated he may have been involved in a previous terror incident. Aharonovitch also said the man’s “entire family is under investigation.”
Tractors have been used in the past in Jerusalem to carry out terror attacks.
