By Rebecca Harrison and Ori Lewis
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli police have concluded that a Palestinian construction worker who killed three Israelis with a bulldozer in Jerusalem last week acted alone and not as part of a militant organization, a spokesman said on Sunday.
"(He) improvised the attack on his own," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said on a day when hundreds of officers were on hand to protect some 30 Israelis who demonstrated near the dead attacker's house to demand his family home be demolished, or in case the protest turned violent.
Hosam Dwayyat crushed cars and overturned a bus on Wednesday on one of Jerusalem's busiest streets. No major militant group claimed responsibility and relatives and neighbors described Dwayyat, 30, as a troubled man with a record of drug offences.
They insisted the family had been unaware of his intentions.
Rosenfeld said Dwayyat, who was shot dead at the scene, had shouted the Muslim slogan "Allahu akbar!" (God is greatest) and said police took that to indicate that he had intended to kill.
Bearing placards reading "Destroy the house" and "We want revenge", about 30 Israelis were given armed police protection to protest at the house occupied by about 20 relatives of Dwayyat in a West Bank village annexed to Jerusalem by Israel.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government has already taken legal advice paving the way for demolition -- a tactic that has in the past provoked international condemnation of Israel.
"That is his house," said Baruch Marzel, a leader of Jewish settlers in the West Bank, pointing out the Dwayyat home |
