Their faces bloodied and voices shaking in anger, survivors of Wednesday’s deadly bulldozer rampage in west Jerusalem stared in disbelief at the trail of destruction left by a Palestinian attacker.
Some yelled out in rage and frustration while others could only look on in silence as rescue teams worked to remove the twisted remains of vehicles crushed by the raging bulldozer.
The attacker was shot dead after he killed at least three people and injured 45 by ramming two city buses and five cars.
One passenger spoke to journalists after climbing through a window to get out of a bus that lay on its side on the city’s busy Jaffa Road after being rammed several times.
He refused to let medics attend a bleeding wound to his head, and angrily blamed Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for the incident.
”All this is Olmert’s fault,” he snapped.
The bulldozer driver, a 30-year-old east Jerusalem Palestinian, was shot dead by police after driving several hundred metres against the traffic flow, stopping near the entrance to the bustling Mahane Yehuda market.
Gabi, a security guard at a nearby building, said he tried to take aim at the bulldozer driver but could not see the target.
”I saw him coming like a madman, driving into cars. I ran towards the tractor but was unable to get in front of it. People shouted at me to kill him, but I couldn’t see him properly,” he said.
Residents of the nearby ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood crowded the pavements after the incident as medics treated dozens of injured in the middle of the road.
A group of Yeshiva religious school students demanded revenge.
”I think the policeman shouldn’t have killed him. He should have shot him in the leg and then let the people take care of him — by lynching him,” said 21-year-old Yossi R, who declined to give his full name.
Rescue services used trucks and a crane to extricate a flattened car from under the bulldozer.
Dozens of ambulances and police vehicles were lined up near the scene of the attack, unable to get through because of the destruction sewn along the road.
The owner of a Jaffa Road pharmacy who witnessed the incident said Israel should respond with force and call a halt to peace talks with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.
”It’s time we spoke their language of blood. Who will we make peace with?” he asked, adding: ”There is no connection between them and peace.”
Yaakov Cohen, a 53-year-old unemployed man, was equally furious.
”They don’t care if they use a screwdriver, a bulldozer or a bomb,” he said. ”All they want is to kill us.”
A little-known group calling itself the Imad Mughnieh unit of the Brigades of the Liberators of the Galilee claimed responsibility for the deadly attack in a phone call to Agence France-Presse.
The same group claimed an attack in March on a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem that killed eight people, which they said was revenge for the killing of senior Lebanese Hezbollah commander Imad Mughnieh in Damascus.
The militia blamed Mughnieh’s death on Israel and has vowed revenge.
Israel welcomed Mughnieh’s death but denied any responsibility. — AFP
