Border Guard Injured in Car-Ramming Attack, as Attorney Demands Investigation Into Another

A Border Guard was injured Thursday afternoon in a car-ramming incident at the Kalandiya checkpoint north of Yerushalayim. The officer was lightly injured. The driver of the vehicle sped away after the attack, and IDF soldiers and police were searching for him. In a statement, police said that the officer was lightly wounded in the head and lower body, and an investigation was being conducted into the circumstances of the attack.

Meanwhile, another car-ramming attack was not getting its just due, an attorney for the victims said. The car-ramming incident Tuesday night in Yerushalayim was “clearly a terror attack,” according attorney Chaim Bleicher, who is representing the two victims of the attack. “Police are attempting to cover up the fact that this was a terror attack by claiming it was a road accident, but there are plenty of witnesses who will corroborate that it was clearly terrorism,” he told Channel 20.

The incident occurred Tuesday night outside Sha’ar Yafo near the Old City. Two yeshivah students who were waiting to cross the street were hit by a vehicle that drove onto the sidewalk and ran them down. “The car was driven by two Arabs,” said Bleicher, an attorney for the Chonenu organization. “After the driver ran into them, he backed up and drove back onto the sidewalk and again attempted to run them down. When he was unsuccessful, the two occupants of the vehicle got out of the car and began beating the students, cursing them in Arabic.” Afterwards, they got back into the vehicle and drove away, Bleicher said.

“We know that at least one of the occupants of that vehicle was arrested, but we understand he was released,” Bleicher said. “The police are trying to classify this as a road accident, and it most certainly is not. I don’t know what questions police asked, but I know what the victims tell me, and what the witnesses say, and this needs to be treated as a terror attack. If an investigation is not conducted it will harm the security of all Israelis,” he said.

Bleicher sent a letter to police demanding an investigation be opened, but has yet to receive a response, he said. One of the victims, a 28-year-old Yerushalayim resident, is still in the hospital, recovering from wounds to his upper body.