Jerusalem bus driver: Terrorist looked me in the eye and drove at me

Bus driver Assaf Nadav never got a chance to tell the Palestinian at the wheel of a 20-ton bulldozer to drive more carefully.

"I saw a bulldozer coming towards me and initially there was a small bang on the left side," Assaf said about the initial moments of an attack on Wednesday on Jerusalem's main Jaffa Road in which the bulldozer ploughed into vehicles and pedestrians.

"I opened the window to tell him to watch his driving. He looked me in the eye and drove towards the bus and then lifted it and turned it on its side," Assaf told reporters.

He said his No. 13 commuter bus was full, and some of the passengers were standing. After it was flipped over, a policewoman broke the back window and people streamed out.

Asked to describe what it had been like inside the bus, Assaf replied: "Screaming would be too mild a word."

At least three people were killed in the attack. A civilian and a policeman shot the bulldozer driver dead.

An eyewitness to the attack said that the bulldozer which plowed into a packed commuter bus also picked up a nearby car "like a toy."

At the scene of the attack, a half-dozen cars were flattened and a third was overturned by an enormous Caterpillar tractor. A bus also was overturned, and another bus was heavily damaged.

"I saw the bulldozer smash the car with its shovel. He smashed the guy sitting in the driver's seat," said Yaakov Ashkenazi, an 18-year-old yeshiva student.

"I was shocked. I saw a guy going crazy," said Yosef Spielman. "All the people were running. They had no chance."

An officer in the police special patrol unit was the first to respond. The officer, Eli Mizrahi, described how he cocked his gun and tried to approach the bulldozer. "As I made contact, he started moving forward. He was crazed, he held the steering wheel, held it close and started driving fast toward Jaffa while ramming into a car near civilians standing by."

"A civilian who was there fired the first shot," Mizrahi said. "I ran, and went up to the steps, and while he was crazed I fired two shots and neutralized him. This is what we were taught in the police force - to be professional and do our job in the best possible way," Mizrahi added.

Dozens of people were seen fleeing from the scene of the attack, as the wounded lay on the ground amid piles of broken glass and blood stains.

A woman sprinkled water over a baby's bloodied face, a rescue worker stroked the hair of a dazed elderly pedestrian and a loved one raised the bleeding leg of a woman sitting outside the overturned bus.

Esther Valencia, a 52-year-old pedestrian said she barely escaped the carnage.

"He almost hit me. Someone pushed me out of the way at the last moment. It was a miracle that I got out of there."

Sixteen-year-old Eyal Lang Ben-Hur, was in a bus when the driver yelled out, "Get out of the vehicle! Everyone out! People fled in a panic," he said, "and the bus was hit an instant later."

Chen Shimon, a 19-year-old solider, said the whole scene was a nightmare.

"I just got off the bus and I saw the tractor driving and knocking everything down in his path," she said. "Everything he saw he rammed. He had a gun and started shooting at a police officer."

	Onlookers standing near the scene of an attack in downtown Jerusalem on Wednesday in which a Palestinian man rammed a bulldozer into a passenger bus. (Reuters)