Palestinians laid to rest on Sunday a man who killed two people, including a baby, when he rammed his car into Jerusalem pedestrians, sparking days of violence.
Video footage from the funeral showed a group of youths carrying Abdelrahman Shaludi’s casket to the cemetery near Jerusalem’s Old City, chanting “God loves him because he is a shahid,” or martyr.
The 21-year-old Palestinian was shot dead by police in what they called a “terror attack” after Wednesday last week’s car attack.
Photo: AFP
A three-month-old girl was killed on the spot and on Sunday an Ecuadorian woman, who was one of six people hurt, died of her injuries, Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital said.
Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa condemned the attack that killed Karen Mosquera, saying on Twitter: “We will reject violence from wherever it comes.”
The Ecuadoran Foreign Ministry said the 22-year-old had been completing the process of converting to Judaism in Israel.
Photo: AFP
Police had initially refused to return Shaludi’s body to his family after a post mortem, saying the family had rejected an Israeli court’s conditions for the funeral, which it determined could be attended by only 20 people.
Jawad Siyyam, an activist from Silwan, where the Shaludis reside, alleged Israel had threatened the family they would bury him on their own if they did not accept the conditions.
His family rejected those terms, but eventually the two sides agreed 70 people could attend, Siyyam said.
Earlier on Sunday, the family held what it called a “symbolic funeral” in honor of the “martyr” Shaludi in Silwan, a sensitive Palestinian sector close to Jerusalem’s Old City.
Hundreds of Palestinians attended the ceremony, bearing an empty casket and reciting prayers, before trying to ascend to the al-Aqsa mosque compound, the epicenter of recent tensions.
Heavily armed police used tear gas to repel hundreds at the “symbolic funeral,” arresting one person in Silwan.
Elsewhere, in east Jerusalem police arrested two youths in Issawiya for stone-throwing.
Shaludi was shot dead by police as he fled on foot from what Israeli authorities branded a “terror attack” that killed Haya Zissel Braun, the Israeli baby who was also a US national.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Jerusalem’s security forces were reinforced with an extra 1,000 police and border police, including special forces.
“We will not allow the reality of Jerusalem to become one of throwing stones and firebombs, and disturbances,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu blamed “extremist Islamic elements” for being behind the attempts to “incite Israel’s capital.”
“We will use all the force necessary, resolutely and responsibly, to ensure they do not succeed,” Netanyahu said.
Clashes have been taking place since Wednesday last week throughout a tense east Jerusalem, which has been the scene of ongoing unrest on a nightly basis since the murder of a Palestinian teenager by Jewish extremists in July.
The clashes intensified during the 50-day Gaza war over the summer.
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