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Israel: Suspect Shot After Car Rams Crowd

Israel: Suspect Shot After Car Rams Crowd

A Palestinian suspect has been shot and five people have been injured after an attack on pedestrians in Jerusalem, police say.

The attacker ploughed onto the curb next to an Israeli paramilitary border police station in East Jerusalem.

The vehicle hit three border policewoman and lightly injuring them, according to police spokeswoman Luba Samri.

The assailant then drove forward again, hitting another policewoman and an Israeli man.

A border police officer and a security guard began firing at the vehicle from the station's entrance.

The man got out of the car and tried to attack the guards with a butcher's knife, Ms Samri added.

The suspect was then shot and seriously wounded by the guards.

The driver and those who were injured have been taken to hospital.

Moshe Edri, a regional police commander, said: "The swift and determined response stopped the attack as it was beginning and prevented more innocents from being injured."

The attack is being treated by police as a suspected terror attack, and happened on the Jewish holiday of Purim, when the streets are busy with pedestrians.

The attacker has been identified as a Palestinian man in his 20s from East Jerusalem, police said.

Tensions flared in Jerusalem last year, both before and after the war in Gaza, but the city has been relatively calm recently.

The attack mirrors a series of incidents in the city last year in which Palestinians ploughed vehicles into groups of pedestrians, killing several people.

Friday's attack happened at the same intersection where a Palestinian rammed his car into a crowded train platform and attacked people with an iron bar.

That attack, which happened last November, left one person dead and 13 injured.

It comes after the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) agreed on Thursday to suspend security coordination with Israel in the occupied West Bank.

Officials are concerned this could have a knock-on effect on security throughout the territory.

The Palestinians want a state in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which have been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Middle East War, and in Gaza, a strip of land on the Mediterranean coast that is separated from the West Bank.