A Palestinian man appears to have deliberately veered out of traffic and rammed his car into a light rail stop near Ammunition Hill in Jerusalem, killing a three-month-old baby girl and injuring several other people.  Police shot the driver to death as he tried to flee the scene on foot.

“The driver is a resident of Silwan and has a terrorist background.  He has served time in jail for terror activity,” Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

A surveillance video camera captured the event, thankfully not in gruesome detail.  However, the silver car driven by Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi is seen cutting across two lanes of traffic from the left side of the picture, and plowing through the commuters who had just gotten off of a trolley. 

“They said the car came out of nowhere.  The stroller flew into the air and the baby was found ten meters away from the stroller,” said medic Hanoch Zelinger, who tried to save little Haya Zissel-Brown.  The three-month old had no pulse and serious head injuries.  “We immediately began resuscitation procedures and got a pulse in the infant. We took her to the nearest emergency room with both parents riding with us,” Zelinger added.  Haya was buried on Wednesday night.

Al-Shaludi ran, but didn’t get too far before police shot him.  He died of his wounds hours later in hospital.  Authorities say he has a criminal record of security offenses.  Later, police arrested his brother after a disturbance broke out around the family home.

The baby had American citizenship and the incident was swiftly condemned by the US State Department, which urged Israel and the Palestinian Authority to keep cool heads. 

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu already began lashing out, blaming Hamas and holding Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas responsible.  So far, no group has claimed responsibility for the light rail attack.