JERUSALEM: Seven people were wounded, two of them critically, when a shooter opened fire on a bus in Jerusalem's Old City early Sunday, Israeli police and medics said.
Israel's emergency medical services, the Magen David Adom (MDA), called the incident a "terror attack in the Old City."
An AFP journalist reported heightened security around the site, not far from Jerusalem's Western Wall, the holiest prayer site for Jews.
Police have launched a search for the shooter, who fled after the pre-dawn attack.
"The security forces ... are working to apprehend the terrorist and will not cease until he is caught," Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said in a statement.
He added that the authorities were working to "restore calm" in the city.
MDA spokesperson Zaki Heller said six men and one woman were wounded in the attack, with all seven "fully conscious."
Paramedics said they had provided lifesaving treatment to people with gunshot wounds, including bus passengers and people in the King David's Tomb parking area.
All victims were taken to nearby hospitals.
"We were on the scene very quickly," senior medic Nehemia Katz and paramedic David Trachtenberg said in a statement.
"On Ma'ale Hashalom Street we saw a passenger bus ... in the middle of the road, bystanders called us to treat two males around 30 years old who were on the bus with gunshot wounds."
Bus driver Daniel Kanievsky described how his trip descended into bloody chaos.
"I was coming from the Western Wall. The bus was full of passengers," he told reporters in front of his bullet-riddled vehicle.
"I stopped at the station of the Tomb of David. At this moment, the shooting started. Two people outside I see falling, two inside were bleeding. Everybody panicked."
The shooting comes about a week after a three-day conflict between Israel and Islamic Jihad militants in the densely populated Palestinian enclave of Gaza.
At least 49 Palestinians, including Islamic Jihad fighters and also children, died in the violence, which 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 also killed.
In the aftermath, Israeli authorities increased raids in the occupied West Bank.
More than 50 Palestinians have been killed, including fighters and civilians, in operations and incidents in the West Bank since then.--AFP