A 3-month-old infant was killed and eight others injured when a car crashed into a light-rail station in Jerusalem in what police are investigating as a terror attack.
The incident occurred Oct. 22 at the light-rail station at Ammunition Hill in northern Jerusalem as people were disembarking from the train.
Hundreds of mourners attended the funeral that night in Jerusalem for Chaya Zisel Braun, who was a U.S. citizen. The infant died at Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus a few hours after the attack, which the United States condemend in a statement as “despicable.”
The driver of the car, Abdelrahman al-Shaludi, died in a Jerusalem hospital after being shot by Israel Police as he attempted to flee the scene. Family members told the Palestinian Maan news agency that Shaludi, 21, of the flashpoint neighborhood of Silwan in eastern Jerusalem, had been released recently from Israeli prison, where he had served 14 months. He was the nephew of Mohiyedine Sharif, the former head of Hamas’ armed wing who was killed in 1988.
Soon after the attack, riots broke out in Shuafat, in eastern Jerusalem, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to clamp down on the violence that has been growing the past few months in the Jerusalem region.
The light rail had come under attack in recent weeks by stones thrown from eastern Jerusalem. — jta