JERUSALEM (Reuters)—Two people including a child were killed and several injured when a driver rammed his car into a group of people at a bus stop on the outskirts of Jerusalem on Friday, Israeli emergency services said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the incident as a terrorist attack and ordered security forces to be reinforced.
A volunteer medic with United Hatzalah ambulance service, Ariel Ben-David, told Army Radio: "Everyone was lying out, thrown about, in very bad condition. To our regret, one child did not survive."
Police said the driver had been "neutralized" but it was not immediately confirmed that he had been killed. A man who said he had witnessed the attack from his car told Israel's Channel 12 news an armed civilian had shot the attacker before a police officer arrived and also shot into the car.
The incident occurred during a period of high tension following an attack in which a lone Palestinian gunman shot seven people outside a synagogue last month.
Hardline Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is responsible for police forces in the area, visited the scene.
Footage circulated on social media showed a blue car that had crashed into a pole in front of the bus stop in the Ramot area, a part of Jerusalem that was annexed by Israel after the 1967 Middle Eastern war.
Israeli forces have carried out hundreds of arrests over recent months during near-daily raids in the occupied West Bank that have seen bloody gunbattles with Palestinian militants. More than 35 Palestinians, including gunmen and civilians, have been killed so far this year.
A spokesman for Hamas, the Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip, praised the attack as a "heroic operation" but did not claim responsibility.
(Reporting by Maayan Lubell, Dan williams, writing by James Mackenzie, editing by Philippa Fletcher and Nick Macfie)