Deadly Road Rampage Rattles Jerusalem

A Palestinian driving an enormous construction vehicle went on a deadly rampage on a busy Jerusalem street Wednesday, plowing into a string of cars, buses and pedestrians, killing at least three people and wounding at least 45 before he was shot dead by security officers.

The violence, the first major attack in Jerusalem since March, wreaked havoc and left a large swath of damage on Jaffa Road, a main thoroughfare in downtown Jerusalem. Traffic was halted, and hundreds of people fled through the streets in panic as medics treated the wounded.

Three Palestinian militant groups took responsibility for the attack, but the claims could not be independently verified and Israeli police referred to the attacker as a "terrorist" acting on his own. Israeli police said the man was a bulldozer operator who worked in the area for a local construction firm.

The attack took place in front of a building housing the offices of The Associated Press and other media outlets. BBC footage captured the huge frontloader crushing a vehicle and an off-duty soldier shooting the perpetrator in the head several times at point-blank range as onlookers screamed.

A half-dozen cars were flattened and others were overturned by the Caterpillar vehicle. A bus also was overturned, and another bus was heavily damaged. Israel's national rescue service confirmed three deaths. The bodies lay motionless on the ground covered in plastic.

CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips reported that determining whether this attack was the work of an individual, or part of a wider plan by a militant group, will no doubt influence Israel's reaction.

Phillips said the tractor was believed to have been involved in a construction project running along Jerusalem's Jaffa Road - a major artery running through the city.

A woman sprinkled water over a baby's bloodied face, a rescue worker stroked the hair of a dazed elderly pedestrian and a loved one raised the bleeding leg of a woman sitting outside the overturned bus. Israeli TV said a woman driving a car in the frontloader's path threw her baby girl out the window to save the child. The baby escaped unscathed, but the woman was injured when the frontloader plowed into her car, the report said.

"I saw the bulldozer smash the car with its shovel. He smashed the guy sitting in the driver's seat," said Yaakov Ashkenazi, an 18-year-old seminary student.

Eli Mizrahi, an officer in a special anti-terror unit, said he and his partner sped to the scene on a motorcycle from the nearby Mahane Yehuda market in downtown Jerusalem. An off-duty soldier had just shot the attacker, but not killed him.

"I ran up the stairs (of the vehicle) and, when he was still driving like crazy and trying to harm civilians, I fired at him twice more and, that's it, he was liquidated," Mizrahi told reporters.

Esther Valencia, a 52-year-old pedestrian, said she barely escaped the carnage. "He almost hit me. Someone pushed me out of the way at the last moment. It was a miracle that I got out of there."

Sixteen-year-old Eyal Lang Ben-Hur was in a bus when the driver yelled out, "Get out of the vehicle! Everyone out!" People fled in a panic, he said, and the bus was hit an instant later.

The attack occurred in an area where Jerusalem is building a new train system. The project has turned many parts of the city into a big construction zone.

Wednesday's attack represented a chilling departure from militants' previous methods, which were mostly suicide bombings and shootings.

During the second Palestinian uprising, which erupted in late 2000, Jerusalem experienced dozens of suicide bombings and other attacks. The city has been largely quiet in the past three years, though sporadic attacks have persisted. In March, a Palestinian gunman entered a Jerusalem seminary and killed eight young students.

The three organizations that took responsibility for the attack included the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, which is loosely affiliated with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement. The other two are the Galilee Freedom Battalion, which is suspected of being affiliated with Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a fringe left-wing militant group.

The Hamas militant group, which runs the Gaza Strip and is currently maintaining a fragile cease-fire with Israel, said it did not carry out the attack but nevertheless praised it.

"We consider it as a natural reaction to the daily aggression and crimes committed against our people in the West Bank and all over the occupied lands," said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev called the attack a "senseless act of murderous violence."

"Those who refuse to condemn this act of terror are exposing themselves for what they really are - namely the enemies of fundamental human values," he said.

Despite the Palestinian claims of responsibility, Israeli police chief Dudi Cohen said the attacker appeared to be acting alone. "It looks as if it was a spontaneous act," he said.

Abbas aide Saeb Erekat condemned the violence.

"We condemn any attacks that target civilians, whether Israelis or Palestinians," he said.

Major Israeli retaliation seems unlikely given the police chief's claim that the attacker acted alone and the Jewish state's desire to maintain the Gaza ceasefire and to support Abbas' security forces in the West Bank.

Israeli police said the man, a father of two children in his 30s, was an Arab from east Jerusalem and had a criminal background. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said he had worked as a construction worker on the railway project.

Later Wednesday, five military vehicles gathered outside the man's two-story home in east Jerusalem. Family elders sat on the balcony, and several dozen villagers sat in front of the home.

Friends of the family identified the attacker as Hussam Dwikat, 29. They said he was a devout Muslim, but had known ties to any militant groups.

"Everybody is in shock. When I was told what happened I started to curse Hussam because this is the first time he has done something like this," said Salayan Weyed, a friend of the attacker's wife.

In contrast to West Bank Palestinians, Arab residents of Jerusalem have full freedom to work and travel throughout Israel. Many Jerusalem Arabs work in the construction industry.

About two-thirds of Jerusalem's 700,000 residents are Jews, and the rest are Palestinians who came under Israeli control when Israel captured their part of the city in 1967.

Israel's national rescue service said at least 45 people were wounded in Wednesday's attack. At one point, a paramedic lowered a screaming baby into an ambulance.

Injured people sat dazed on the ground amid piles of broken glass and blood stains on the street. A baby had blood all over its face, and the driver of the vehicle was slumped motionless over the steering wheel.

"Where's the baby? Where's the baby?" said one distraught man as he ran from the overturned bus.

Yosef Spielman, who witnessed the attack, said the construction vehicle picked up a car "like a toy."

"I was shocked. I saw a guy going crazy," he said. "All the people were running. They had no chance."

At one point, witnesses said a female traffic cop shot at the perpetrator, after which he slumped over with his eyes closed. Then he suddenly lifted himself back up and continued his rampage, the witnesses said.

Cassia Pereira, office manager for AP's Jerusalem bureau, watched the attack unfold outside her window.

"I saw him but it was too late and there was nothing to do," she said, with tears in her eyes. "I was in panic. I couldn't say a word ... I realized something was not normal, something was wrong."

The mayor of Jerusalem, Uri Lupolianski, said his daughter was on one of the buses rammed by the attacker, but was not injured.

"To our regret the attackers do not cease coming up with new ways to strike at the heart of the Jewish people here in Jerusalem," Lupolianski said.