Jerusalem attack: 4 killed and 15 injured after lorry ploughs into crowd in 'terror attack'

Chloe Chaplain9 January 2017

Four people have been killed and at least a dozen more injured after a truck "rammed" into pedestrians in Jerusalem in what was described as a “deliberate attack”.

The vehicle ploughed into a group of soldiers as they disembarked from a bus on a busy promenade overlooking the walled Old City on Sunday.

Local radio has reported that bodies were left “strewn on the street” after the incident.

"It is a terrorist attack, a ramming attack," a police spokeswoman said on Israel Radio.

Luba Samri said the lorry veered off course on Sunday and struck a group of soldiers who had just disembarked from a bus.

'Deliberate attack': Israeli security forces work at the scene of a truck ramming incident in Jerusalem
REUTERS

Police said the dead, three women and one man, were all in their twenties.

An Israeli bus driver who witnessed the incident said on the radio the truck ploughed into a group of soldiers, and that they fired on the driver, who reversed direction and ran over them again.

"They shot him, until they neutralised him," said the bus driver, who gave his name only as Moshe.

Security camera footage of the truck shows the vehicle barreling into a crowd of soldiers gathered next to a bus and then reversing back into them.

The Palestinian Hamas movement praised the attack but has not claimed responsibility.

Hamas spokesman Abdul-Latif Qanou called it a "heroic" act and encouraged other Palestinians to do the same and "escalate the resistance."

Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister Avigdor Lieberman visited the scene of the incident earlier today.

They talked to rescue workers and security officials at the site before quickly leaving.

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