The shooting was the first attack by a Palestinian since May to result in the death of a Jewish civilian. Attempted assaults in the Old City are relatively common, but are usually stopped.
A Palestinian militant shot dead an Israeli civilian and wounded at least four other people, including police officers, on Sunday morning on a street leading to the holiest site in Jerusalem. It was the first killing of a Jewish Israeli civilian by a Palestinian gunman since May. Israeli state broadcasters said that the gunman opened fire with an automatic gun shortly after 9 a.m. in an alley outside a site sacred to both Jews, who call it Temple Mount, and to Muslims, who refer to it as the Noble Sanctuary or the Aqsa Mosque compound. One civilian was killed by a shot to the head, a second civilian was moderately wounded and two police officers and a third civilian were lightly hurt, according to Magen David Adom, the Israeli affiliate of the International Red Cross. The man killed was later named by the police as Eliyahu Kay, a tour guide. The attacker was shot dead by security officers seconds after the assault, according to Omer Bar Lev, an Israeli minister who oversees the police. The attacker was named in the Israeli and Palestinian news media as Fadi Abu Shkhaydem,42, a teacher from a Palestinian district in East Jerusalem. A Hamas-owned television channel said that he was a senior leader of Hamas, the militant Palestinian movement that runs the Gaza Strip and is listed as a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and other countries.
