Terror in Jerusalem
Four die as ‘IS jihadi’ drives lorry into Israeli soldiers... then reverses over victims
A PALESTINIAN lorry driver killed four young Israeli soldiers yesterday in a horrific terror attack.
He ploughed into them at high speed then deliberately reversed over the dead and injured.
Shocking CCTV footage shows the flatbed HGV careering off a road in East Jerusalem and mowing down a military party which had just got off a coach at the popular tourist spot.
The four victims, all in their 20s, included three women thought to have been on compulsory military service. Another 17 soldiers were injured.
The attacker, 28-year-old Fadi Qunbar, was shot dead at the scene. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said ‘all the signs’ were that he was an Islamic State supporter who had been inspired by last year’s truck atrocities in Berlin and Nice.
‘He drove backwards to crush more people’
Security footage from the scene shows terrified soldiers trying in vain to get out of the way of the hurtling truck in the Armon Hanatziv neighbourhood.
After sending bodies flying, the driver reverses over people on the ground before he is shot and killed by other soldiers.
Several coachloads of rookie troops had just arrived at a site overlooking Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock as part of a tour to familiarise them with Jerusalem history.
Tour guide Lea Schreiber said: ‘I heard my soldiers screaming and shouting. I saw a truck that went on the side of the road. Soldiers starting shooting. They told them to hide behind the wall because there was fear of another attack.’
She added: ‘There was no sense in that reverse. He drove backward to crush more people. That was really clear.’
Mr Netanyahu said of Qunbar, a father of four, ‘According to all the signs, he was a supporter of the Islamic State. We know that there is a sequence of terror attacks. There definitely could be a connection between them, from France to Berlin and now Jerusalem.’
But relatives and neighbours in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Jabel Mukaber, not far from the attack scene, said that although the driver had been a follower of the ultraconservative Salafist form of Islam, he had no known ties to militant groups.
A woman who said she was his sister said Qunbar’s wife had asked him to come home for lunch yesterday but he told her he ‘had work to do’.
She said police had since arrested the attacker’s parents, wife and two brothers.
Last night the female victims were named as Yael Yekoutiel, Shir Hadjaj, Shira Tzour and the man as Erez Auerbach. Israeli military sources dismissed suggestions that troops had hesitated to open fire because of a controversial manslaughter conviction last week against a soldier who shot dead a wounded Palestinian assailant.
‘Once the soldiers understood it was an attack, they fired in the direction of the vehicle,’ said a spokesman.
Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that rules Gaza, praised the assault.
Spokesman Abdul-Latif Qanou called it a ‘heroic’ act, but did not claim responsibility. This provoked a strong retort from the UN envoy for the Middle East peace process, Nickolay Mladenov, who said: ‘It is reprehensible that some choose to glorify such acts which undermine the possibility of a peaceful future for both Palestinians and Israelis. There is nothing heroic in such actions.’
Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat called on residents to be wary but carry on with normal life.
‘There is no limit to the cruelty of terrorists who spare no means in killing Jews,’ he said.
A wave of Palestinian attacks that broke out in October 2015 has claimed 247 lives so far.