- Title: JERUSALEM/ GAZA : Palestinian rams bulldozer into Israeli vehicles, killing three
- Date: 2nd July 2008
- Summary: (BN09) GAZA CITY, GAZA (JULY 2, 2008) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) HAMAS OFFICIAL SAMI ABU ZUHRI SAYING: "We do not expect it will influence the Gaza calm. There is a continued aggression against our people in the West Bank and Jerusalem and so it is natural that our people there will respond to such aggression."
- Embargoed: 17th July 2008 13:00
- Keywords:
- Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
- Reuters ID: LVAF0F0ZA4G5JYXE347U5H6D0YFI
- Story Text: Palestinian construction worker rams bulldozer into buses and cars on one of west Jerusalem's busiest streets, killing three Israelis and wounding more than 40 before he was shot dead.
A Palestinian rammed a bulldozer into Israeli buses, cars and pedestrians on one of Jerusalem's busiest streets on Wednesday (July 2), killing three people and wounding more than 40, emergency services said.
Dramatic video footage shows men in civilian clothes climbing aboard the tractor and firing a pistol into the cab as others wrestled inside.
After the struggle, a helmeted policeman in body armour fired his automatic rifle into the slumped figure in the cab. The officer later told reporters that he had fired twice, fearing the wounded man still posed a danger to the public.
Special forces policeman, Eli Mizrachi, shot the driver dead. He told Reuters, "As he was driving I ran to the direction of the tractor. The initial shooting was done by a civilian security man, I was already on the tractor, I shot him twice in order to neutralise him."
Israel's main ambulance service said more than 40 people were taken to hospital. Two hours after the incident, rescue workers said they had pulled the body of a woman from a car that they had found crushed beneath the bulldozer.
Among the vehicles damaged was a van with its entire front crushed and a No. 13 bus, flipped on its side and gashed by the shovel of the bulldozer.
Blood smeared the bus's shattered windscreen and trailed along the street.
Visiting the site, Israeli Minister of Internal Security Affairs, Avi Dichter said the attacker, a 30-year old, was from Arab East Jerusalem.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility from militant groups and police said they were trying to establish if the dead man acted alone.
Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad described the attack as a "natural" response by Palestinians to Israeli aggression but, nearly two weeks into a truce in the Gaza Strip, neither Islamist group laid claim to organising the Jerusalem violence.
It was the first Arab attack in Jewish west Jerusalem since a gunman killed eight students on March 6 at a Jewish religious school a few hundred metres (yards) from the scene of Wednesday's bloodshed.
The scene in the aftermath of the incident was reminiscent of numerous suicide bombings that destroyed buses on Jaffa Road during a wave of attacks in 1996 and during the first years of a Palestinian uprising that began in 2000.
Since then, fatal attacks on Israelis have become relatively rare, despite frequent rocket and mortar fire from Gaza. Israeli forces have killed more than 360 Palestinians this year, mostly in Gaza. More than 100 of the Palestinian dead were civilians.
The incident came nearly two weeks into a shaky ceasefire in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas.
"We do not expect it will influence the Gaza calm," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in Gaza.
"There is a continued aggression against our people in the West Bank and Jerusalem and so it is natural that our people there will respond to such aggression," he said, in apparent reference to Israeli raids against militants.
Arab and Jewish populations do not mix extensively, but Palestinian workers are a familiar sight on construction and highway projects in Israel. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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