06-Dec-15: Vehicle-ramming and knifing on busy Jerusalem street tonight

The assailant lies dead on Yirmiyahu Street after a
combined vehicle ramming and stabbing attack
[Image Source]

On a chilly, early-winter night, the first candle of Hannukah, Jerusalem has been the scene of another terror attack. At about 7:45 this evening, Sunday, there were reports of a stabbing on busy Yirmiyahu Street in the Romema section of the city. Times of Israel says the assault involved both stabbing and vehicle-ramming:

[T]he suspected assailant first attempted to ram his car into a crowd of people. After apparently crashing his car without hitting anyone, the suspect then exited the vehicle and began slashing at a 65-year-old police volunteer. The alleged attacker was then shot and killed by a soldier who happened to be at the scene. He was identified by police as a 21-year-old East Jerusalem resident. The police volunteer suffered mild stabbing wounds to his shoulder and was treated by a medical team that arrived at the scene. He was later transferred to the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in the city. A second man, 20, was also rushed to Shaare Zedek after suffering light wounds when he was hit by a car. It was not clear if the vehicle that hit the 20-year-old belonged to the suspected assailant or to an uninvolved individual. Despite the proximity of the suspected attack to the main entrance to Jerusalem, the surrounding streets were all open to traffic. [Times of Israel]

Ynet's report says the attacker was stopped by an IDF service man who, having sized up the situation, got out of a bus that was passing by and fired at the Arab assailant, killing him and ensuring no further injuries to innocent Israelis. At this stage, we know only that the attacker was 21 and a resident of an Arab neighbourhood of Jerusalem, Beit Hanina.

Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah) Street is a main artery for buses and other vehicles, running between the city's principal gateway and the mainly Haredi neighbourhoods on Jerusalem's north side.

Continuing its traditional role of placing Palestinian Arab terrorists in the center of the victimhood stage irrespective of the facts, and unfailingly dismissing Arab terror attacks via the indiscriminate use of the word "alleged", Ma'an News Agency tonight leads its report of the attack with this headline:

Source

The illustration accompanying the report, depicting Jerusalem's Sha'ar Shechem (Damascus Gate), bears a negligible relationship to this evening's events. The same could be said of the headline.