Lone terrorist shot and wounded 8 in Israel, including pregnant woman

A man in his 20s took a gun and started shooting people in Old Jerusalem Sunday morning, leaving eight people recovering from gunshot wounds. 

According to Bridges for Peace, the terrorist, identified as 26-year-old Amir Sidawi of east Jerusalem, first opened fire at a bus parked near the Western Wall complex. 

A bus driver nearby was helping a passenger in a wheelchair get on his bus. When he heard the shooting, he told Ynet that he wanted to drive away but wasn't going to leave the man in the wheelchair. 

Sidawi then reportedly ran to another site where he started shooting again, wounding six more people. A pregnant woman was among the victims, shot in the abdomen. She was taken to the hospital, where her baby was delivered in an emergency C-section and is reportedly in serious but stable condition.

Several of the victims were US citizens, including four from the same family, visiting Israel from their ultra-Orthodox communities in New York.

One of the American victims was 22-year-old Menachem Palace, who was visiting Israel on a Birthright tour, a program that sponsors free tours to Israel for Jewish young adults.

Palace was sitting next to the window on the bus and was shot in the shoulder, though he told reporters he felt no pain due to adrenaline and did not realize he had been shot until he saw the blood on his shoulder.

"People shouted Shema Yisrael," Palace told the Times of Israel. Shema Yisrael means 'Hear, O Israel,' from Deuteronomy 6:4, a prayer that Jewish people often say in the moments before their death.

"It was a pretty scary sight," Palace says in the interview, "but thank God I didn’t feel a thing."

The attack happened early in the predawn hours and after Sidawi wounded eight people, he went and hid for a few hours while a manhunt ensued. 

At 7:20 a.m., he took a taxi to a police station, carrying the gun he used during the attack as well as a knife, to turn himself in.

Sidawi reportedly does not have ties to any terror groups and acted alone in the attack. Israeli media reported that he has a criminal record and served five years of an eight-year sentence after being convicted of grievous bodily harm in 2015.