Dubai: A Palestinian assailant rammed his car into a group of Israelis near an Israeli police station in Occupied East Jerusalem on Friday, injuring four occupation officers and a bystander, and lunged at security guards with a knife before being shot and wounded, regime police said.
The attacker first ploughed onto the curb next to an Israeli paramilitary border police station in occupied East Jerusalem, hitting three border policewomen and lightly injuring them, Israeli police spokeswoman Luba Samri said. He then charged forward, hitting another policewoman and an Israeli man.
A police officer and a security guard fired at the vehicle from the entrance to the station, she added.
The Palestinian then got out of the car and tried to attack the guards with a butcher’s knife, she said. The guards fired and seriously wounded him, she said. The injured and the motorist were taken to hospital.
The attack took place at the same intersection where a Palestinian man rammed his car into a crowded train platform in November and then attacked people with an iron bar, killing one person and injuring 13.
The occupation police identified the attacker as a Palestinian man in his twenties from occupied East Jerusalem. They say it is difficult to prevent such attacks, which appear to be carried out by lone assailants who are not thought to be dispatched by a organisation.
The Israelis occupied East Jerusalem in 1967 and annexed it later as the so-called “unified capital of Israel”. The international community continues to reject the move. The occupation regime has since been settling hundreds of thousands of Jewish colonists into the city, often removing indigenous Palestinians from their homes for the exclusive resettlement of Jews.
The Israeli paramilitary border police patrols the area between West Jerusalem and occupied East Jerusalem.
Regime police immediately cordoned off the area, and ultra-Orthodox Jewish onlookers gathered at the scene. The front of the car was smashed and the windshield was cracked. Israeli television showed footage of the wounded attacker lying on the ground before being taken to hospital.
Jewish holiday of Purim
The attack came as Israelis celebrate the Jewish holiday of Purim, a carnival-like holiday. Police said it was boosting security throughout the occupied city, and Jerusalem’s Israeli mayor Nir Barkat said celebrations would carry on as usual.
Friday’s attack also mirrored a spate of similar assaults on Israelis involving cars late last year, in the same part of occupied Jerusalem, over the city’s most sensitive holy site, revered by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.
In late October, a Palestinian from occupied east Jerusalem, who had served prison time for resisting Israel, slammed his car into a train platform in that part of the city, killing a baby girl and a young woman from Ecuador.
Two weeks later, a Palestinian man rammed his car into a crowded train platform in occupied East Jerusalem and then attacked people with an iron bar, killing one person and injuring 13. Both attackers were shot by police and died of their wounds.
Since then, there had been a relative lull in tensions in the city, though last week, the occupation’s mayor of Jerusalem and his bodyguard leapt from his car and apprehended an 18-year-old Palestinian after he stabbed an Israeli near the regime’s City Hall, according to a statement from the mayor.
— with inputs from AP
