Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel is engaged in a “great war on terror” during a visit to the site where two Palestinian attackers killed six people and wounded 12 in a shooting at a bus stop in northern Jerusalem on Monday morning.
“A great war against terror is taking place on all fronts,” Netanyahu told Israeli media at the scene of the attack at the Ramot intersection, offering his condolences to the families of the slain victims and wishing a speedy recovery to the injured.
Palestinian attackers opened fire on people waiting at a bus stop at a busy intersection during the morning rush hour. An Israeli soldier and a civilian who were present shot and killed the attackers, police said.
Netanyahu arrived at the scene approximately two hours after the shooting. The prime minister was scheduled to appear in court on Monday for his ongoing corruption trial, which was postponed due to the security situation.
"We are now pursuing and surrounding the villages from which the terrorists came," Netanyahu added. The two terrorists, both Palestinians from the West Bank, came from villages southeast of Ramallah: Qatanna and Al-Qubeibah.
Israeli security forces said they are surrounding Palestinian villages on the outskirts of the nearby West Bank city of Ramallah as part of a heightened response to the attack.
“The fighting continues in the Gaza Strip,” Netanyahu continued, saying that Israel “will destroy Hamas as we promised and free our hostages, all our hostages.”
“Unfortunately, the war also continues in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, where we have acted with great force,” he said, using the biblical term for the West Bank, adding that “the Shin Bet and the IDF have thwarted hundreds [of attacks], and the Israel Police have also thwarted hundreds this year.”
“But unfortunately, not this morning,”he said.
Footage of the attack showed dozens of people fleeing a bus stop at the busy intersection. One bus, its windshield riddled with bullet holes, remained stopped at the stop, with belongings strewn across the street.
Paramedics responding to the scene said the area was chaotic and covered in broken glass, with injured and unconscious people on the road and a sidewalk near the bus stop.
Monday's shooting took place at a major intersection at the northern entrance to Jerusalem, on a road leading to Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem.
Hundreds of security forces arrived at the scene to search for additional attackers or explosives that may have been planted in the area.
Hamas welcomed the attack without claiming responsibility, calling it a “natural response to the occupation’s crimes against our people.”
Monday’s shooting was the deadliest attack since a mass shooting in October 2024, when two West Bank Palestinians opened fire inside a light rail train in Tel Aviv, killing seven people and wounding many others. Hamas’s military wing claimed responsibility for that attack.
The war in Gaza has led to an increase in violence in both the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Israel. Palestinian terrorists have attacked and killed Israelis in Israel and the West Bank, while there has also been an increase in settler violence against Palestinians.
