One Israeli killed as excavator rams Jerusalem bus

An Israeli man was killed and five others wounded Monday when an excavator rammed into a bus in east Jerusalem, causing police to shoot dead the driver, medics said, according to Agence France-Presse.

“A 25-year-old man was run over by the excavator and killed, and the bus driver was moderately to lightly injured,” Zaki Heller, the emergency services spokesman said adding that four people were lightly hurt in the incident which police described as a “terror attack.”

There were no passengers on the bus, in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of the city.

Surveillance video roadcast on Israeli television showed the excavator's mechanical arm tearing into the side of the bus as it lay on the sidewalk.

Israeli media said the driver of the digger was a Palestinian from East Jerusalem.

Tensions have been high in Jerusalem for the past month over the Gaza war and the killing of a Palestinian teen in the city by alleged Israeli assailants out to avenge the deaths of three abducted Israeli youngsters in the occupied West Bank.