Investigation of Accident Shows Driver Intended to Kill

One day after a car driven by an Arab American plowed into a group of people waiting at a bus stop, killing one and injuring 23, Internal Security Minister Moshe Shahal said the driver acted with intent to kill.

Shahal’s announcement Tuesday reversed the local police’s initial assessment that Ahmed Abdel Hamidah had lost control of the rented block Fiat Uno and that the incident was an accident.

The woman killed in the attack, Flora Yehiel-Twito, 24, was buried in Kiryat Ata on Tuesday.

The incident Monday come amid the tense atmosphere generated by Sunday’s terror attacks in Jerusalem and Ashkelon, in which 27 people, including the two suicide bombers, were killed.

Pedestrians were waiting at the bus stop at a busy intersection near Jerusalem’s French Hill neighborhood when Hamidah’s car, traveling at a high speed, crashed into the shelter.

Two civilian bystanders shot and killed Hamidah after the cash.

Shahal said a background check had found that Hamidah, a former drug addict, had recently become a devout Muslim and that he might have links to the fundamentalist Islamic Jihad organization.

“It’s not final, but I have the latest assessment from the checks done by police,” he said. “The tendency is to see yesterday is to see yesterday’s incident as an attack.”

Jerusalem Police Chief Aryeh Amit told reporters, “Most of the signs rule out a traffic accident. The car and brakes were in working order. One of the skid marks we saw yesterday apparently did not come from this car.”

He said some of the skid marks found were when the car accelerated toward the people on the pavement.

He added that police had found a paper with the words “Islamic Jihad” in the car, though it was not a claim of responsibility.

The Israeli daily Ha’aretz reported Tuesday that Hamidah told friends that morning that they would see him on television that night.

The acquaintances were quoted as saying that they did not give his statements any thought.