 Bulldozer man scars Jerusalem
(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-03 07:33
JERUSALEM: A Palestinian rammed a bulldozer into cars, buses and pedestrians on a busy Jerusalem street yesterday, killing at least three people and wounding 45 before being shot by a security officer. Half a dozen cars were flattened and others overturned by the bulldozer. A bus fell on its side, and another was heavily damaged. Israel's national rescue service confirmed three deaths. The violence, the first major attack in Jerusalem since March, wreaked havoc on Jaffa Road, a main thoroughfare in downtown Jerusalem. Traffic was halted, and hundreds of people ran in panic as medics treated the wounded. Three Palestinian militant groups have claimed responsibility for the attack, but the claims could not be verified independently. Israeli police, however, referred to the attacker as a "terrorist" acting on his own, and said he was a bulldozer operator who worked for a local construction firm in the area. Israeli police chief Dudi Cohen said the attacker appeared to be acting alone. "It looks as if it was a spontaneous act." The incident took place in front of a building housing the offices of the Associated Press and other media outlets. A TV footage captured the huge bulldozer crushing a vehicle and an off-duty soldier shooting the perpetrator in the head several times from point-blank range as onlookers screamed. Israeli TV said a woman driving a car in the bulldozer's path threw her baby girl out of the window to save it. The baby escaped unscathed, but the woman was injured when the bulldozer plowed into her car. "I saw the bulldozer smash the car with its shovel. He smashed the guy sitting in the driver's seat," said Yaakov Ashkenazi, an 18-year-old seminary student. Eli Mizrahi, an officer in a special anti-terrorism unit, said he and his partner sped to the scene on a motorcycle from the nearby Mahane Yehuda market in downtown Jerusalem. An off-duty soldier had just shot the attacker, but not killed him. "I ran up the stairs (of the vehicle) and, when he was still driving like crazy and trying to harm civilians, I fired at him twice more and, that's it, he was liquidated," Mizrahi said. The incident took place in an area where Jerusalem is building a new train system. The project has turned many parts of the city into a big construction zone. Agencies (China Daily 07/03/2008 page1) |
