JERUSALEM, July 14 (Xinhua) -- Two Israeli police officers succumbed to their wounds in hospital, the police chief said, after three Arab citizens of Israel shot them in an attack in a holy site in East Jerusalem on Friday.
The assailants, residents of the Arab city of Umm al-Fahm in central Israel, were killed by a police force.
The gunmen, armed with two rifles and a gun, arrived at the al-Aqsa mosque compound, a major sacred site in East Jerusalem on Friday morning. After the morning prayer, they walked towards the Old City gates nearby and opened fire at a group of police officers, according to, Luba Samri, a spokeswoman with the police.
The attackers injured three officers before they escaped towards one of the mosques in the area. A police force found them after a short manhunt and shot them dead, Samri said.
The police officers were evacuated to hospital together with a third officer, who suffered moderate wounds, according to a spokesperson with the emergency medical service.
After less than five hours, police chief, Roni Alsheikh, announced that two of them died in hospital.
The rare gunfight took place in a flashpoint site, holy to both Muslims, who know it as the Noble Sanctuary, and to Jews, who revered it the Temple Mount. The site has been at the center of a spate of violence in the West Bank and Israel that broke in mid-September 2015.
Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan told reporters at the site that the investigation is still ongoing. "Today's terror attack was an extremely severe event which crossed all red lines. We will need to reevaluate all of the security arrangements on the Temple Mount and its environs," he said.
He called on Arab and Jewish leaders "to work to calm the situation and maintain the quiet in Jerusalem."
Following the shooting, Commander of the Jerusalem District Yoram Halevi ordered to shut down the compound, canceling all the Friday prayers at the site.
In an unusual step, a police force went inside the site in in order to scan it, Samri said. The site was annexed by Israel, together with the rest of East Jerusalem, shortly after Israel seized from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war. Because it is the third holiest site in Islam, the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf controls and manage it.
Israel has accused the Palestinian National Authority of "inciting" the unrest. The Palestinians said it was the result of the 50-year Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, home to more than 5 million Palestinians.
The Israeli-Palestinian violence has claimed the lives of at least 250 Palestinians, most of them identified by Israel as attackers, 44 Israelis, two U.S. tourists, two African asylum seekers, two Jordanian tourists, and a British student.
