A Palestinian driver crashed his car into a group of Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem on Monday night, injuring 17 people in what Israeli police described as a ”terror attack”. The driver was immediately shot dead by an army officer.
The incident happened at a crossroads between east and west Jerusalem, close to the walls of the Old City.
Two of the injured were seriously hurt, and the rest had light or moderate injuries, police said. The soldiers, from the Artillery Corps, were on a tour of Jerusalem in the run-up to the Jewish new year next week.
Micky Rosenfeld, an Israeli police spokesperson, said the incident was an attack, not a traffic accident. ”We can confirm it was a terror attack,” he said. ”The man was shot and killed.”
The driver’s family were reported as saying on Tuesday that the man, named as Qassem al-Mughrabi (19) did not have a driving licence and was agitated after the refusal of a marriage proposal.
The family said it was an accident, not an attack. But Elad Amar (23) the lieutenant who shot the driver, told Israel Radio the car was heading directly at the soldiers. ”I didn’t see his face, just the car as it neared us,” he said. ”He ran into them, they flew into the air, some landing on the hood.”
The incident will once more bring calls from some Israelis for the destruction of the houses of Palestinians involved in attacks in Israel. Ehud Barak, the Defence Minister, demanded that legal procedures to allow house demolitions be speeded up ”to contribute to deterring potential terrorists”.
The Israeli Supreme Court has previously ruled that such house demolitions, once a regular Israeli tactic, did not prevent attacks and should be halted. – guardian.co.uk