Jerusalem (AFP) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Wednesday to find Palestinian gunmen behind a West Bank attack, after a baby delivered prematurely following the shooting died.
The baby’s mother was one of seven people wounded in the drive-by shooting at a bus stop near the Ofra settlement in the occupied West Bank late Sunday.
She was 30-weeks pregnant and the baby was delivered by caesarean section at a Jerusalem hospital.
“We lost a few hours ago an newborn baby, four days old,” Netanyahu said in an address to foreign media.
“We will find the killers, we haven’t stopped searching. We will find them and bring them to justice,” he said, as the army and security services continued their search.
US peace envoy Jason Greenblatt said in a Twitter message that the death was “absolutely heart-breaking”.
“My thoughts & prayers are with the family of the baby who died today as a result of the despicable terror attack on Sunday,” he wrote. “This is an attack Hamas praised as ‘heroic’”.
The Islamist Hamas movement, which runs the Gaza Strip, saluted the shooting and in a statement said it proved “resistance” was still alive in the West Bank.
Following the attack the 21-year-old mother was reported as stable, but the Shaare Zedek hospital said Monday that her baby had taken a turn for the worse.
The child died “despite the medical efforts of the premature baby unit to save him,” the hospital said on Wednesday.
The others wounded in the attack were not in life-threatening condition.
Palestinian attacks against Israelis occur sporadically in the West Bank.
Sunday’s shooting north of Jerusalem was the most serious attack in the West Bank since October 7, when Palestinian Ashraf Naalwa shot two Israelis dead in an industrial zone for a nearby settlement.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.