Palestinian gunmen kill 6 people in attack on Jerusalem bus stop

A body is seen on the ground as reinforcements arrive to the area and roads are closed as a security precaution following an armed attack at the Ramot Junction, at the entrance to East Jerusalem, Sept. 8, 2025.
Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu/Getty via CBS News

Palestinian gunmen opened fire at a bus stop in north Jerusalem on Monday, killing six people and wounding several others, according to officials. The attack targeted a location in a part of Jerusalem that Israel captured in the 1967 war and later annexed in a move not recognized by the United Nations and many individual countries. The bus stop is at the busy Ramot Junction on Yigal Street, which leads to East Jerusalem.

Israeli emergency service Magen David Adom (MDA) said five people were killed in the shooting attack, but Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, speaking later during a visit to Hungary, said six people were killed and that a pregnant woman was among those wounded. Police said two gunmen were also killed.

The MDA said earlier that seven other people were left in serious condition, but it was unclear if that number had changed as the death toll climbed from an initial four to the six announced by Saar.

The dead included a man “about 50 years old and three men aged around 30,” according to a statement from the MDA, which added that it was providing medical treatment to several of those wounded.

Video from the scene showed dozens of people fleeing the sound of gunfire, running past stationary cars at the crowded intersection.

Israeli media reported that the attackers boarded a bus full of passengers and opened fire.

“A security officer and a civilian at the scene responded immediately, returned fire, and neutralized the attackers,” the police said in a statement.

“A painful and difficult morning. Innocent civilians, women, men, and children were brutally murdered and wounded in cold blood on a bus in Jerusalem by vile and evil terrorists,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog said in a social media post. “In the face of this barbarity, we saw extraordinary acts of heroism which prevented even further loss of innocent lives. This shocking attack reminds us once again that we are fighting absolute evil. The world must understand what we are up against, and that terror will never defeat us.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who visited the scene of the attack on Monday, was holding a meeting to assess the situation after the shooting, his office said.

“We are pursuing and encircling the villages from which the terrorists came. We will reach everyone who assisted them, who sent them, and we will take even harsher measures,” Netanyahu said later in a statement shared by his office. “We are at war — a full-scale war against terror on multiple fronts.”

Hamas, the U.S.- and Israeli-designated terrorist organization that has been at war with Israel in Gaza for nearly two years, praised the shooting, saying it was carried out by two Palestinian militants.

“We affirm that this operation is a natural response to the crimes of the occupation and the genocide it is waging against our people,” Hamas said in a statement.

The shooting was one of the deadliest incidents of its kind since the war in Gaza was sparked by the Hamas-orchestrated Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli officials. Hamas and its allies also seized 251 Israelis as hostages during the attack, about 50 of whom remain in Gaza, and 20 of whom are still believed to be alive according to Netanyahu.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed at least 64,522 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, which the United Nations considers the most reliable information available.

Israel’s Gaza City operation expands

On Saturday, Israel’s army called on Palestinians in Gaza City, long the enclave’s biggest population center, to move to a humanitarian area it has designated in the south, as it expanded its military operations in preparation of seizing the famine-stricken city.

Parts of the city, home to nearly 1 million people, are already considered “red zones,” where evacuation orders had been issued ahead of expected heavy fighting.

Aid groups have repeatedly warned that a large-scale evacuation of Gaza City would exacerbate the dire humanitarian crisis there. Palestinians have been uprooted and displaced multiple times during the nearly two-year-long war in Gaza, and humanitarian groups have warned that many may be unable to leave.

Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote in a social media post that the army had declared al-Muwasi — a makeshift tent camp in southern Gaza — a humanitarian area and urged everyone in the Gaza City, which the army has called a Hamas stronghold, to leave. The army said civilians could travel in cars down a designated road without being searched.

Israeli forces have struck humanitarian areas throughout the war, including al-Muwasi, which they declared a safe zone months ago.

Hamas reacts to reported new U.S. ceasefire proposal

Monday’s attack came as Hamas said it was assessing a new U.S.-brokered ceasefire proposal to end the war in Gaza, which was reportedly delivered Sunday. President Trump warned Sunday in a social media post, without offering any details of the latest proposal, that it was a “last chance” for Hamas.

“Everyone wants the Hostages HOME. Everyone wants this War to end! The Israelis have accepted my Terms. It is time for Hamas to accept as well,” Mr. Trump said on his Truth social network. “I have warned Hamas about the consequences of not accepting. This is my last warning, there will not be another one!”

The latest proposal reportedly calls for the immediate return of all remaining Israeli hostages, alive and dead, on the first day of a ceasefire, at which point negotiations to end the war would begin.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Saar said Monday that Israel had accepted Mr. Trump’s proposal.

Hamas, in its own statement, said it would remain engaged with negotiators, but it reiterated its long-held stance that it would only agree to a ceasefire that included a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and an end to the war.

Hamas said it “confirms readiness to immediately sit at the negotiating table to discuss the release of all prisoners in exchange for a clear declaration of ending the war, a complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and the formation of a committee of independent Palestinians to run the Gaza Strip and to start its work immediately.”