By Paul Goldman and Hyder Abbasi - NBC News
TEL AVIV — Five US citizens were among eight people injured after a Palestinian gunman opened fire on a bus near Jerusalem's Old City early Sunday, a US Embassy spokesman confirmed.
Two of the victims were in serious condition, including a pregnant woman with abdominal injuries and a man with gunshot wounds to the head and neck, according to Israeli hospitals treating them.
Tom Nides, the US ambassador to Israel, said on Twitter that he was "deeply saddened to confirm that Americans were injured in this attack."
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A spokesman for the Office of Palestinian Affairs at the US Embassy in Jerusalem confirmed to NBC News that five US citizens were among the injured.
And he assured that they were collecting information about the attack, but he did not provide more details about the victims.
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The shooting occurred while the bus was waiting in a parking lot near the Western Wall, the holiest place of prayer for Jews.
Yehezkel Prover of Kiryat Yearim, Israel, said his son Elazar Prover, 19, a US citizen, had called him in the early morning hours after the attack.
"He told me that he was slightly injured and that he was fine. The bullet that hit him went through his body and came out," he said.
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"While wounded, he saved the life of a man who was bleeding from a dangerous cut on his neck," he added.
"Elazar learned first aid, so he knew how to help him and bandaged him up and stopped the bleeding."
Israeli police said the suspected attacker turned himself in after security forces entered the nearby Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan to pursue him.
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At a cabinet meeting on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said the suspected attacker was operating alone.
And he detailed that he had already been arrested by the Israeli security forces.
He also said that his government "wished the injured a speedy recovery," and that the entire State of Israel was "praying for their safety and wishing them a full recovery."
The Jerusalem attack came after a tense week between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
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Last weekend, Israeli planes launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip against the militant group called Palestinian Islamic Jihad, sparking three days of fierce cross-border fighting.
Islamic Jihad fired hundreds of rockets during the incident to retaliate for airstrikes that killed two of its commanders and other militants.
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Israel said the attack was meant to thwart threats by the group to respond to the arrest of one of its officials in the West Bank.
Forty-nine Palestinians, including 17 children and 14 militants, were killed and several hundred wounded in the fighting, which ended with an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire, Palestinian authorities said.
No Israelis were killed or seriously injured.
Israel Police officers at the scene of the shooting in Jerusalem, on August 14, 2022. Maya Alleruzzo / AP
The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement that a rocket fired from Gaza was responsible for the deaths of at least four children after hitting a Palestinian house in the Jebaliya refugee camp, where the Health Ministry said six people were killed. .
The Islamic militant group Hamas, which controls Gaza, stayed out.
A day after the ceasefire halted the worst round of fighting in Gaza in more than a year, Israeli troops killed three Palestinian militants and wounded dozens in a gunfight that erupted during an arrest raid in the West Bank city of Nablus.