5.56X45mm
Milforum Mac Daddy
Jul.
22, 2008
Etgar Lefkovits , THE JERUSALEM POST
For the second time in three weeks, an Arab bulldozer driver from east Jerusalem rammed his construction vehicle into a city bus and several cars on a central thoroughfare in the capital on Tuesday, wounding 15 people before being shot dead by a Druse border police officer and a civilian passerby.
The early afternoon attack on King David Street was seen as a failed copy of July 2's lethal bulldozer rampage on Jaffa Road in which Husam Taysir Dwayat killed three people and wounded dozens before he was killed.
Facing a series of attacks by Palestinians apparently acting on their own, politicians and security officials demanded Tuesday that the government immediately move to deter future attacks by destroying the terrorists' homes, and some called to reexamine the way Arab construction workers from east Jerusalem are employed in the city.
The latest assault began shortly before 2 p.m. when the tractor driver, Ghassan Abu Tir, a 22-year-old resident of the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Umm Tuba who was working on a construction project on a side street near the King David Hotel, pulled into King David Street and repeatedly crashed his vehicle into a No. 13 Egged bus, which managed to escape, and then rammed into five cars, one of which he overturned, before being shot dead by a motorist who happened by the scene.
"I was driving on the main road when suddenly the tractor hit me in the rear on the right hand side," said bus driver Avi Levy.
At first Levy thought it was a traffic accident, but then the attacker struck the bus over and over, causing pandemonium as passengers shouted: "God save us" and "escape, escape.
"
"He made a U-turn and rammed the windows twice with the shovel. The third time he aimed for my head - he came up to my window and death was staring me in the eyes," Levy said.
"Fortunately I was able to swerve to the right [onto a small side street], otherwise I would have gone to meet my maker," he said as he stood next to the badly damaged bus, whose left-side windows were completely blown out.
An eyewitness said Abu Tir, who was wearing the large, white skullcap commonly worn by religious Muslims, repeatedly slammed his vehicle into the side of the bus, before speeding into several cars.
"He didn't shout anything, [as] he was completely occupied with finding people to attack," said Moshe Shimshi, 30, who was driving his motorcycle on King David Street during the attack.
"There was panic on the street as people were running away from the bus," said Yohanan Levine, 16, who distinctly recalled hearing a baby crying amid the chaos.
The carnage quickly ended when a passing driver shot the assailant dead.
The motorist, Yaki Asa-El, 53, from the Sussiya settlement in the Southern Hebron Hills, jumped out of his car and shot Abu Tir through the window of his bulldozer.
A former company commander in the Armored Corps, Asa-El was talking on his speaker phone with his son when he came upon the attack.
http://www. jpost. com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1215331056523
Hmmm... an armed citizen stopped a crazed attacker. I remember posting a news article about something similar in Japan except that folks were killed by the attacker.
In strict gun control Japan man kills 7 with knife, truck
Yeah... at least Israel understands that an Armed Society works. When evil is armed to the teeth, the law abiding citizenry must be armed to fight back.