JERUSALEM - Israeli police said on Sunday they had arrested a suspect in a shooting attack in a bus in Jerusalem's Old City, which wounded eight people, two critically and including a pregnant woman.
The terrorist is in our hands, police spokesman Kan Eli Levy told public radio hours after the attack took place not far from the Western Wall, the holiest prayer site for Jews.
A gunman started spraying bullets at the public transport bus and people outside the vehicle in a pre-dawn attack at the Tomb of David bus stop, according to driver Daniel Kanievsky.
I was coming from the Western Wall. He told reporters in front of his bullet-riddled vehicle that the bus was full of passengers.
I stopped at the Tomb of David. The shooting started at this moment. Two people outside I see falling were bleeding, two inside were bleeding. Israel's emergency medical services, the Magen David Adom MDA, called the incident a terror attack in the Old City We were on the scene very quickly,'' the medics said in a statement.
On Ma'ale Hashalom Street we saw a passenger bus in the middle of the road. Two males, around 30 years old, were on the bus with gunshot wounds, and bystanders called us to treat them. MDA spokeswoman Zaki Heller initially said six men and one woman were wounded, with all seven fully conscious before police raised the wounded toll to eight.
One of the wounded was a pregnant woman, whose baby was delivered by the attack, a spokesman for Shaarei Tsedek Hospital told AFP.
She is in serious condition and intubated, he said. The infant was delivered and is in a stable but serious state. Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said after the attack that police, army and other security services are working to apprehend the terrorist and will not cease until he is caught. All those who seek our harm should know that they will pay a price for any harm to our civilians.
He said the Israeli Defense Forces and the IDF are working to restore calm and a sense of security in the city.
Hamas, a Palestinian islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, has hailed a heroic operation, claiming no responsibility for the attack.
Our people will continue to resist and fight the occupier by all means, it said in a statement.
The shooting came a week after the end of a three-day conflict between Israel and Islamic militants in the densely populated Palestinian enclave of Gaza.
At least 49 Palestinians, including Islamic fighters and a number of children, died in the violence that ended last Sunday after Egypt negotiated a truce.
Since March, 19 people -- mostly Israeli civilians inside Israel -- have been killed in attacks, mostly by Palestinians. Three Israeli Arab attackers were killed.
In the aftermath of the attacks, Israeli security forces increased raids in the occupied West Bank.
More than 50 Palestinians have been killed in operations and incidents in the West Bank since then, including fighters and civilians.