JERUSALEM: Construction vehicle hits and kills a pedestrian and overturns a bus on a main street in Jerusalem in what police suspect is a Palestinian attack

Record ID: 355008

  • Title: JERUSALEM: Construction vehicle hits and kills a pedestrian and overturns a bus on a main street in Jerusalem in what police suspect is a Palestinian attack
  • Date: 4th August 2014
  • Summary: JERUSALEM (AUGUST 4, 2014) (REUTERS) AN EXCAVATOR WITH POLICE AND FORENSIC TEAM AROUND POLICE OFFICER AT SCENE EXCAVATOR AND BUS TURNED OVER SOLDIER
  • Embargoed: 19th August 2014 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Jerusalem
  • City:
  • Country: Israel
  • Topics: Crime,Business,General,Transport
  • Reuters ID: LVA1RUX4561OE13BNWQOC8N0KSO
  • Story Text: A construction vehicle hit and killed a pedestrian and overturned a bus on a main street in Jerusalem on Monday (August 4) in what police qualified as a "terrorist attack". The incident ended when policemen shot dead the driver of the yellow excavator.
    There were no passengers on the bus, in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of the city. Surveillance video broadcast on Israeli television showed the excavator's mechanical arm tearing into the side of the bus as it lay on the sidewalk.
    Israeli media said the driver of the digger was a Palestinian from East Jerusalem.
    Jerusalem police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the tractor first hit and seriously injured one person. That person later died. The police then shot dead the excavator's driver.
    "The tractor made its way down the main road and hit the bus, flipped the bus over. At this moment in time what we know from the police officers that arrived at the scene, opened fire, one of the suspects and we are talking about the suspect inside the tractor itself, he was shot and killed," Rosenfeld said.
    "The police units are looking into exactly what took place moments before, during and after this terrorist attack which we've confirmed in Jerusalem this afternoon," Rosenfeld added.
    In two incidents in July 2008, construction vehicles driven by Palestinians hit Israeli buses and pedestrians, killing a total of three people. In both incidents, the attackers were shot dead.
    Three years later, an Arab truck driver drove into cars and pedestrians in Tel Aviv, killing one person, in what police said was a deliberate attack. The driver was apprehended and sentenced to life imprisonment.
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