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16-year-old student dead after 2 explosions rock Jerusalem | CNN
Two explosions shook Jerusalem early Wednesday, killing one person and injuring more than dozen, Israeli police said.
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Two explosions shook Jerusalem early Wednesday, killing a teenager and injuring more than a dozen others in a suspected “combined terror attack,” according to an Israeli police spokesperson and the teen’s family.
The first explosion occurred at a bus station near the entrance to Jerusalem at 7:06 a.m., injuring at least 11 people, including the teen who later died, the spokesperson said.
After a second explosion almost half an hour later at the city’s Ramot junction, at 7:30 a.m., three people were evacuated with minor injuries, police added.
Initial investigations indicated that explosive devices were placed at both blast sites and a search is underway for suspects, the police spokesperson said.
The individual killed was a 16-year-old named Aryeh Shechopek, his family told local media. Shechopek was a student at a yeshiva, a Jewish religious school, and lived in the Har Nof neighborhood in Jerusalem, the family said.
At the site of the first blast, images showed debris strewn on the ground and a parked bus with holes pierced in its windscreen. Metal railings surrounding the bus stop were also damaged and the area was cordoned off.
Two paramedics from Magen David Adom, Israel’s Red Cross affiliate, said when they arrived at the bus station they found two seriously injured people lying on the ground.
“We were at the MDA station by the entrance to the city when we heard a large explosion,” they said. “We immediately headed to the scene in large numbers, including ambulances, MICUs (mobile intensive care units) and medicycles.”
“Two seriously wounded were lying nearby, a 16-year-old in the bus stop and a 45-year-old on the sidewalk.”
Raphael Poch, a spokesman for United Hatzalah International, a volunteer medic group, told CNN first responders saw a variety of injuries, including some from the blast itself. Poch said others were wounded by shrapnel from damaged cars as well as nails and ball-bearings – a hallmark of “bombs that detonate for the sake of terror.”
“This is something very very tragic, and it’s something we haven’t seen in a very long time. And we hope that it doesn’t come back to become a routine, or a regular situation,” Poch said. “Everyone should be able to go to work on a regular day without having to worry.”
The US Embassy in Jerusalem condemned in “the strongest possible terms today’s terrorist attacks on public locations” in a post on Twitter.
“Terrorism is a dead-end that accomplishes absolutely nothing,” the Embassy wrote.