Pat Dollard | Young Americans

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JERUSALEM (AFP) — A Palestinian man killed at least three people and wounded 30 more when he rammed a bulldozer into a bus and cars in central Jerusalem before being shot dead, medics and police said Wednesday.

Israel police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld described the rampage as a “terrorist” attack by a 30-year-old man from occupied east Jerusalem who was working at a construction site alongside the busy road where it took place.

Chaos erupted as the man drove the heavy vehicle along Jaffa Road in the heart of west Jerusalem, ploughing into a crowded public bus and ramming other vehicles including one car which was turned into a mangled wreck.

Several people opened fire at the man driving the earthmover and at least two policemen jumped on to vehicle, emptying several rounds into the driver and leaving him slumped over the wheel, according to AFP reporters.

The attack was the first in Jerusalem since a Palestinian gunmen shot eight Jewish students in March and it was not immediately clear if it would have any impact on the faltering peace negotiations.

“We have four people dead so far, including the driver of the earthmover, and 45 wounded, three of them seriously,” said Yeroham Mendola, a spokeswman for the Magen David Adom emergency services.

Rosenfeld said the authorities had received no specific warnings about an impending attack but have since gone on heightened alert.

“The terrorist is an Arab who lives in east Jerusalem and is known by our services for his criminal activities,” Rosenfeld told AFP.

Witnesses described scenes of mayhem.

“I saw the tractor ramming a car on Jaffa street, people started to shout and I came out the bank and I saw the truck. I shot the driver and the truck stopped,” said Shmuel Aboukiya, a security guard at a nearby bank.

Policewoman Eleanor Nachum said she fired two rounds at the bulldozer while it was still moving.

“I saw the tractor coming around into the bus, I fired two shots at the windshield of the tractor and I think I hit him. Two policemen jumped on the tractor, but he continued driving,” she said.

A little-known group calling itself the Imad Mughnieh unit of the Brigades of the Liberators of the Galilee claimed responsibility in a phone call to AFP. The credibility of the claim could not be immediately established.

The Palestinian movement Hamas which rules Gaza called the attack “the natural result of continuing Israeli aggression and crimes against our people in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem.”

But the Islamist group had no immediate information about who was behind the attack, spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP.

Ambulances rushed to the scene as police and security guards sealed off the area and pushed bystanders away from the overturned bus, which leaked fuel into a street gutter.

Several dazed people with bloody wounds milled around the scene as sobbing commuters called loved ones on their mobile phones. Seven of the wounded were reported in a serious condition.

The incident took place just outside a building housing several international media outlets in the heart of the city, where a major road construction project has been underway for weeks.

In March, eight Jewish teenagers were killed in a shooting at a Jerusalem religious school which was claimed by Hamas.

The previous month, an Israeli woman was killed in a suicide bombing claimed by Palestinian militants at a shopping centre in the desert town of Dimona, near the site of Israel’s nuclear reactor.

Peace talks resumed between Israel and the Palestinians in November at a US-hosted conference but have made little tangible progress since, largely over violence in and around the Gaza Strip and continued Jewish settlement building on occupied Palestinian land.

At least 522 people have been killed since the negotiations resumed, mostly Gaza militants, according to an AFP count.

Israel two weeks entered into an Egyptian-brokered truce agreement with the Islamist Hamas movement in and around the Gaza Strip aimed at stemming months of fighting.

While Hamas has kept to the truce, smaller militant groups have fired a number of rockets and mortars on southern Israel in violation of the agreement.