DRIVER INJURES 17 IN JERUSALEM TERRORIST ATTACK
Matthew Fisher

Canada.com
September 22, 2008
Canada

JERUSALEM – A driver, described as a terrorist by Israeli authorities,
ran amok in a busy intersection near the Old City’s storied Jaffa
Gate just before midnight Monday, injuring 17 pedestrians, before
being shot dead by an Israeli soldier.

"We can confirm it was a terror attack," senior police spokesman
Micky Rosenfeld said. "The man was shot and killed."

Jerusalem’s police chief, Aharon Franco, said the driver had turned
"his car towards a group of soldiers who were at an intersection."

The black BMW used in the attack was registered to a Palestinian man
in a Palestinian suburb of the city. The soldiers who were hit were
apparently on their way to the Western Wall City to say prayers of
penitence before the Jewish High Holidays that begin next week.

After the incident, which seriously injured two, about 15 shots
clearly could be heard as far as several kilometres away. The shots
were followed by a pause, and then three or four more shots were fired.

Police quickly sealed off the area, which is perhaps the most heavily
travelled tourist route into the walled Old City. The Jaffa Gate
leads into the Christian and Armenian Quarters. It’s popular with
pilgrims on their way to visit the Western Wall, which is Judaism’s
most sacred site, the Dome of the Rock, which is Islam’s third-most
sacred site, and Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Jesus is said
to have been buried.

The area was the scene of heavy fighting during Israel’s War of
Independence in 1948.

Although Jerusalem has not had a suicide bombing for some time,
nerves in the city, which both Israelis and Palestinians claim as
their capital, have been on edge since two terrorist attacks in July
that also used vehicles as weapons.

In the first attack, three Israelis were killed and 30 wounded when
a Palestinian man drove a bulldozer into a bus before being shot
dead. Ten days later, another Palestinian tried to drive a bulldozer
into several Israeli vehicles. The man was shot and killed but not
before wounding about 30 people.

Eight Israeli religious students were shot and killed by a Palestinian
man last March in Jerusalem.

Israeli authorities often receive intelligence in advance of such
attacks, but they had no specific information this time, Franco,
the Jerusalem police chief, told Ynetnews. But the police have been
on a high state of alert because of the Muslim month of Ramadan and
the approaching Jewish New Year.

In the first official reaction to the attack, Defence Minister Ehud
Barak repeated a call for new procedures that would allow Israeli
authorities to destroy the homes of terrorists to deter others from
carrying out such attacks.

Barak has been negotiating with Tzipi Livni about whether his party
wishes to stay in the Kadima-led coalition.

Livni, who won the Kadima leadership last week, was asked by President
Shimon Peres on Monday to try to form a new government, replacing
the one led by outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is quitting
because he has been implicated in a corruption scandal.