Attack 'a terrorist incident'
2008-07-02 13:21
Jerusalem - A little-known group calling itself the Imad Mughnieh unit of the Brigades of the Liberators of the Galilee claimed responsibility for a deadly attack in Jerusalem on Wednesday in a phone call to AFP.
In Wednesday's attack a Palestinian man from east Jerusalem ploughed a bulldozer into a bus and a car in central Jerusalem, killing at least two people and wounding several others before he was shot dead by Israeli police.
Israel police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld described it as "terrorist incident" carried out by a man from occupied east Jerusalem who was working at a construction site alongside the busy road where the attack took place.
He said the authorities had received no specific warnings about an impending attack but have since gone on heightened alert.
Chaos erupted as the man drove the heavy vehicle along Jaffa Road in the heart of west Jerusalem, ploughing into the public bus, overturning it, and ramming at least one car which was turned into a mangled wreck.
Several people opened fire at the man driving the earthmover and at least two policemen jumped on to the vehicle, emptying several rounds into the driver and leaving him slumped over the wheel, according to AFP reporters.
"I saw the tractor ramming a car on Jaffa street, people started to shout and I came out the bank and I saw the truck. I shot the driver and the truck stopped," said Shmuel Aboukiya, a security guard at a nearby bank.
Several dazed, bloody people
Policewoman Eleanor Nachum said she fired two rounds at the bulldozer while it was still moving.
"I saw the tractor coming around into the bus, I fired two shots at the windshield of the tractor and I think I hit him. Two policemen jumped on the tractor, but he continued driving," she said.
Several ambulances rushed to the scene after the attack as police and security guards sealed off the area and pushed bystanders away from the overturned bus, which leaked fuel into a street gutter.
Several dazed people with bloody wounds milled around the scene as sobbing commuters called loved ones on their cellphones. Seven people were reportedly seriously wounded.
The incident took place just outside a building housing several international media outlets in the heart of the city, where a major road construction project has been under way for weeks.
"The terrorist himself was from one of the nearby villages in east Jerusalem. We know him and are familiar with him from a criminal background he had but nothing on a terrorist level," Rosenfeld told reporters.