Bus driver: "I stepped on the gas and drove like crazy towards the checkpoint""

December 12, 2024   

Ahmed, the driver of the bus on route 291 of the 'Kavim' company, who was injured in the shooting attack at the Al Khader junction near the tunnel checkpoint, told Hadashot 12 from his hospital room about the moments of terror. "I didn't see where the shooting was coming from, but I heard the gunshot. I realized it was an attack and I was injured in the head. I felt a burning pain in my back and head. I pressed the gas pedal and drove like a madman towards the tunnel checkpoint. "What I thought in those moments was the main thing to save as many people as possible, my passengers." The child Yehoshua Aharon Tuvia Simcha, 12 years old, son of the Gaon Rabbi Zusha Simcha, head of the Hasidic yeshiva in Beitar Illit, and a prominent member of the 'Peni Menachem' community headed by the head of the yeshiva from Gur, Rabbi Shaul Alter, was murdered in the attack. The bus on route 291 of the Kavim company, which was on its way from Beitar Illit to Jerusalem. The driver, who was also injured, continued the journey to the tunnel checkpoint - where the injured were treated by rescue forces and evacuated to hospitals. In addition to the child, another woman, a resident of Jerusalem, was moderately injured. Two others were slightly injured.