Police say Sunday’s deadly truck ramming in Glilot was likely terror attack

Driver made no attempt to brake, but rather accelerated as he plowed into bus stop, probe shows; autopsy disputes family’s claim medical incident may have been to blame

Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent

CCTV footage released by police on October 29, 2024s shows the moment a truck-ramming attack at a bus stop in the Glilot area on October 27, 2024. Police body cam footage then shows the driver attacking an officer before being shot. (EYEPRESS via Reuters)

Police said Tuesday that an ongoing investigation of a deadly truck ramming in central Israel earlier in the week “strengthens the suspicion” that the incident was a terror attack.

In the incident on Sunday, a resident of Qalansawe rammed his truck into people at a bus stop outside the IDF’s Glilot base, killing  72-year-old Bezalel Carmi and wounding 35 other civilians.

According to police, a police officer who was near the scene jumped into the driver’s cabin immediately following the attack, where he was attacked by the driver with a rod.

The police officer fell out of the driver’s cabin and fired shots in the air. Soldiers who were also near the scene identified the incident and shot the driver dead, according to the police investigation.

Police said that its investigation found that the truck diverted toward the civilians at the bus stop, and the driver made no attempt to brake, but rather he accelerated.

“It can be said that the suspicion is growing that the ramming that hit the civilians was carried out with a nationalistic motive,” police said.

Police added that an initial autopsy of the suspect’s body found “no suspicion of a medical incident,” something suggested by his family members.

Police released videos showing the ramming from surveillance cameras and footage from the bodycam of the officer who tried to confront the driver.

Bezalel Carmi, 72, from Rishon Lezion, who was killed in a car-ramming attack outside the IDF’s Glilot base in central Israel, on October 27, 2024. (Courtesy)

The owner of the truck company where the driver worked told the Kan public broadcaster following that attack that he deviated from his set route and drove towards the area where the attack took place: “He shouldn’t have been there.”

The attack on Sunday came as Israel marked the first anniversary on the Hebrew calendar of Hamas’s October 7 mass onslaught against southern Israel, the worst terror attack in Israel’s history, when 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage to Gaza.

Since then, 41 people, including Israeli security personnel, have been killed in a string of additional terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank. Another six members of the security forces were killed in clashes with terror operatives in the West Bank.

In mid-October, a policeman was killed and four people wounded when a terrorist opened fire along the Route 4 highway north of the coastal city of Ashdod, and a man was killed in a terror-stabbing rampage in Hadera the week before. Seven people were killed and at least eight wounded in a shooting and stabbing attack in Jaffa on October 1, just minutes before Iran launched a massive ballistic missile attack on Israel.

Most Popular
read more: