By ANTARA News/Reuters,
Jerusalem : A Palestinian rammed a bulldozer into an Israeli commuter bus, cars and pedestrians on one of Jerusalem`s busiest streets on Wednesday, killing at least three people and wounding dozens, emergency services said.
Police said the driver of the bulldozer was shot dead by police and a soldier who climbed onto the vehicle.
Television footage after the attack showed the highway construction vehicle being pursued by several men, at least one of them in civilian clothes and pointing a pistol. Some of them then crowded into the cab, where a struggle appeared to ensue.
“A bulldozer driven by an Arab went on a rampage on Jaffa Road, hitting pedestrians, buses and cars,” police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said.
The Zaka emergency service said at least three people were killed by the bulldozer and more than 20 people injured. It identified the driver as a Palestinian resident of Arab East Jerusalem.
It was the first Arab attack in Jewish west Jerusalem since a gunman killed eight students in a religious school in March.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, nearly two weeks into a ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas Islamist group in the Gaza Strip.
Emergency vehicles rushed to Jaffa Road after the mid-day attack, where a commuter bus, its side slashed by the bulldozer, stood on its side. Jerusalem`s light railway is being built along the route.
“The only way to stop him was with a bullet to the head. We saw a civilian climb onto the bulldozer and shoot the man. We were relieved,” said witness Moshe Oren.
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 a Palestinian uprising that began in 2000.
At least three other vehicles appeared to sustain damage, including a van whose entire front section was crushed.
“We do not expect it will influence the Gaza calm,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in the Gaza Strip.
“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.
Unlike Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, those living in East Jerusalem, which was also captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, have free access to the Jewish west of the city and beyond.
Arab and Jewish populations do not mix extensively, but Palestinian workers are a familiar sight on construction and highway projects in Israel.
The gunman who attacked the seminary in March was from East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after the 1967 war in a move that did not win international recognition.