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4 Aug, 2014

Excavator attack kills rabbi

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israel-excavator-attack In what is officially described as a terror attack, an excavator driven by Muhammed Naif El-Ja’abis, a 23-year-old Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem, strikes and kills 29-year-old Rabbi Avraham Walles of Mea Shearim. Walles – also transliterated Walz and Wallis – is working for the Atra Kadisha organization as a mashgiach religious instructor overseeing the construction site on Shmuel Hanavi close to the Olive Tree Hotel in central Jerusalem, near the divide between the city’s east and west, to make sure that any graves found at the site are not disturbed. The excavator continues for several hundred meters before ramming into a mostly empty passenger bus and overturning it after several attempts, and then clawing at it with the excavator arm. Security forces at the scene, including police, respond and officer Ariel Tuito of the Nachshon unit of the Israel Prison Service fires a fatal shot, ending the attack with also leaves a total of six people injured, including the bus driver. The attack takes place near the Mir Yeshiva, one of the country’s biggest religious institutions, shortly after thousands of yeshiva students are dismissed from class early to prepare for the fast of Tisha Be’av, the ninth day of the month of Av when observant Jews mourn the destruction of two Jewish temples. The bus stop is normally crowded with yeshiva students. Walles is a member of the ultra-Orthodox Toldot Aharon Hassidic stream. A witness identified as Yossi, who lives near the site:

[Wallis was] working all day here as an inspector for Atra Kadisha, tending to the sites at which Arab workers were digging in places where there were graves. One of the neighbors, who witnessed the scene, saw that at a certain point the driver of the tractor turned the bucket towards him and hit him with it. I myself saw the incident from outside. I heard the shots and saw the police run into the construction site

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