The Palestinian driver of a large construction vehicle went on a deadly rampage along a central Jerusalem thoroughfare on Wednesday, crushing several cars and ramming into buses and pedestrians before an off-duty soldier and a police officer clambered up to the cabin and fatally shot him.
The Israeli police said at least four security officers tried to stop the driver, Hussam Dweikat, before a police officer killed him. Mr. Dweikat, who was about 30, lived in East Jerusalem.
At least three people were killed by the lurching vehicle, and more than 40 were wounded, Israeli officials said.
The police said that they were treating the event as a terrorist attack and that the driver, about 30 years old, was a resident of Sur Baher, an Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel in 1967 and then annexed.
"There is no doubt at all that this was a terrorist attack," Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, said at the scene shortly afterward. He added that the authorities were investigating whether the driver, identified by acquaintances as Hussam Dweikat, had acted alone.
Two of the victims were Israeli women, Bat Sheva Unterman, 33, and Elizabeth Goren-Friedman, 54, both residents of Jerusalem. The identity of the third victim still had not been released by late Wednesday night.
The fact that the driver was a Jerusalem resident, with access to all parts of the city, was likely to raise tensions here. Less than four months ago another East Jerusalem Palestinian, Ala Abu Dhaim, killed eight students at a Jewish seminary in West Jerusalem. The attack led to calls for harsh action like the demolition of the attacker's home.
Police officials said that the driver had a criminal background, but that there had been no prior intelligence information to suggest that he would carry out an attack.
Three Palestinian groups claimed responsibility, including Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a group affiliated with the mainstream Fatah movement led by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. But it was not clear if any of the claims were credible.
The Israeli chief of police, Dudi Cohen, said Wednesday that the attacker appeared to have been acting spontaneously and alone.
Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza and which recently agreed to a temporary cease-fire with Israel there, said it did not carry out the attack but nevertheless praised it, according to The Associated Press.
Witnesses said they saw the vehicle, a large Caterpillar front-end loader, set off close to midday from a building site at one of the busiest intersections in the predominantly Jewish, western half of the city, between the central bus station and the popular Mahane Yehuda market. The hulking vehicle turned onto Jaffa Road, which runs through the city's commercial downtown area, immediately slicing through the drivers' cabin of a small white van and flipping a silver Chevrolet on its side.
Continuing along Jaffa Road, the driver used the loader's serrated scoop to overturn a bus from the Egged public transportation company and leave a swath of tangled wreckage about 300 yards long, as it mowed into several other cars and collided with a second bus.
The police said they believed the driver might have intended to plow into the crowded market.
"It could have been a lot worse," Mr. Rosenfeld said.
Police officials contended that it was necessary to kill the driver to stop him. An initial investigation indicated that at least four security personnel members had tried to stop the driver. The off-duty soldier shot him but failed to kill him. An officer from a special antiterrorism police unit who sped to the scene on a motorcycle finally ended the episode.
The officer, Eli Mizrahi, told reporters that he had climbed up to the driver's cabin "when he was still driving like crazy and trying to harm civilians," and that he fired twice.
Much of the rampage took place directly below the windows of an office block housing several foreign television networks. The vehicle finally came to a halt outside the Israel Broadcast Authority building, a car completely flattened beneath it.
Spare diapers, a toddler's pink jacket and a bottle of fruit juice were scattered on the bottom of the overturned bus. There was blood on the hood of a car whose roof had been ripped off.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/world/middleeast/03mideast.html?_r=2&re...
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@JenkemToweringMidget i dont feel guilt about the holocaust. I had nothing to do with it at all. Same with slavery. I do however accept that they happened. Doesnt make me feel bad at all about it or feel the need to do something to make up for it. Blacks were brought here as slave labor, and mexicans are coming here mostly to work farm labor. I dont really think the jews are bringing them in. People can fight wars without jews being involved at all
CodArk2 4 months ago
@JenkemToweringMidget its not stolen. the jews were living there a long time ago, they simply came back. By your logic the US should give up america, since this land was stolen. The english should leave england, since that land was stolen from the celts. there is not one square inch of the planet than cannot be said to have been stolen from someone else
CodArk2 4 months ago
@JenkemToweringMidget So jews are the only ones to kill pregnant people? Google things like "the Nuremburg laws" and "Kristallnacht" or pogroms. Yes the holocaust did happen. The anti semitism of europeans is what led to it. It was widely recorded by several different armies and a lot of pictures. And i suppose places like Auschwitz were just for appearances. I hardly believe such a small group of people controls western civilization
CodArk2 4 months ago
@JenkemToweringMidget it is hyperbole. the jews are not as bad as the nazis. this is called hyperbole. can you prove any of those claims you made about the palestinians? And the holocaust happened, its a fact of history. How its subverting western culture eludes me.
CodArk2 4 months ago
@JenkemToweringMidget yeah, and the arabs stole that land, and the ones that were there before them stole it, and the ones before them, and on and on. I see the israelis claim to their land as being as legitimate as anyone elses claims to land. Just because you hate jews doesnt make them any different
CodArk2 4 months ago
die u filthy jews...
MrMoodyKSA 4 months ago
Ha, most comments are rants off topic.
THEMSASBOYZ 4 months ago
@tizintishka palastenine civilians get killed because they are held hostage by hamas and used as human shields,settlements are not outlawed by any agreement or international law nor does the land belong to the palastenines and the political prisoners held in Israel are all terrorists and murderers yet they are held in conditions much better then they deserve what els you got?
yairbe5 5 months ago
What about terror attacks on Palestinian civilians what about the building of illegal settlements on Palestinian lands what about the thousands of Palestinian prisoners detained by Israelis
tizintishka 5 months ago
@mechancanard when the israelis set up mass concentration camps and shove the palestinians into gas chambers for the express purpose of killing them off then invade the surrounding nations like jordan, egypt, syria and others to wipe out all the palestinians there too, then you can say they are the same as the nazis, until then take your hyperbole and STFU
CodArk2 5 months ago