JERUSALEM — A Palestinian man driving a construction vehicle went on a rampage Wednesday in downtown Jerusalem, crushing cars, overturning a bus and killing three people.
The attacker left a 300-yard trail of destruction before being stopped by an off-duty Israeli soldier, who climbed into the vehicle’s cab and shot him to death. The attack left 36 people injured.
“Terrorists keep finding new ways to attack us,” Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupoliansky said.
Using the Caterpillar vehicle’s front-mounted shovel, the driver repeatedly rammed a bus full of passengers until it flipped over. One woman was killed instantly when the shovel pierced the windshield of her Toyota car.
Israeli radio reporter Yitzhak Noy witnessed part of the attack and said he briefly made eye contact with the driver. He was, Noy said, “a young, handsome man. He looked cold and focused.”
Israeli police identified the assailant as Hussam Duwayaat, a 30-year-old father of two from Sour Baher, an Arab village on the southern outskirts of Jerusalem. Security forces quickly descended on the family home and questioned several of his relatives but made no arrests.
Duwayaat normally drove the front-loader as part of a construction project to install a commuter rail system in Jerusalem.
“He didn’t turn up for work today,” police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said.
But just before noon, Duwayaat apparently came to the construction site and commandeered the vehicle. Rosenfeld speculated that his ultimate target was a crowded open-air market a few hundred yards from where the Palestinian was killed.
The attack took place on Jaffa Road, one of downtown Jerusalem’s main east-west corridors. But the light-rail construction has closed several lanes, which made it difficult for cars to escape the rampaging vehicle and later hindered the arrival of ambulances and rescue vehicles.
Attack survivor Miki Aronson was turning off Jaffa Road into a parking lot and thought the oncoming construction vehicle was signaling to let her pass.
“But then he just came at me. He kept coming at me, crushing over the car,” Aronson told Israeli radio. “He crushed it like a box. I have no idea how I am alive now.”
Rosenfeld, the police spokesman, said Duwayaat appeared to have acted alone, although several obscure Palestinian militant groups issued conflicting claims of responsibility.
The attack was the first in Jerusalem since early March, when a Palestinian gunman from east Jerusalem killed eight young religious students inside a yeshiva.
“Jerusalem is a complex city, where Arabs and Jews have lived together for tens, even hundreds of years,” Police Commissioner Dudi Cohen said. “The security and public reality is a complex one.”
Residents of Sour Baher described Duwayaat as an unassuming and apolitical family man. One neighbor, who did not wish to be identified, said the Duwayaat family has been warned by Israeli officials not to erect a traditional mourning tent to honor him.
Many Israelis were enraged in March when the family of Alaa Abu Dheim, the yeshiva attacker, erected a mourning tent that included the flag of the militant group Hamas.
