JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian driver who crashed his car into a police roadblock, injuring six officers, in a flashpoint Jerusalem neighbourhood on Sunday, police said.
The incident occurred in Sheikh Jarrah, in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem, which is the focus of a court case in which several Palestinian families could be evicted from homes claimed by Jewish settlers.
Video obtained by Reuters showed a car slamming at high speed into the roadblock in what police said was a deliberate attack. Police said officers opened fire, killing the driver, whose name was not immediately released.
Abu Ubaida, a spokesman for Gaza’s ruling Hamas Islamist mlitant group, praised what he described as the “heroic and daring operation” in Sheikh Jarrah.
Hamas began rocket strikes on Israel on Monday after weeks of tensions over the possible Sheikh Jarrah evictions and clashes between police and Palestinians at Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
After nightfall, police brought a mobile crane to winch concrete barriers into place, blocking the entrance to the potential eviction site and an adjacent tomb reputed to be the burial place of Simon the Just, an ancient Jewish high priest.
Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in a move that has not won international recognition. Palestinians want all of Jerusalem as the capital of a state they seek in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
(Reporting by Jeffrey Heller, Mustafa Abu Ganeyeh and Stephen Farrell; Editing by Alex Richardson)
