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An Israeli police officer escorts a wounded girl, whose face is painted for the upcoming Jewish holiday of Purim, from the scene after a bulldozer slammed into vehicles in Jerusalem, on Thursday.

JERUSALEM – A Palestinian driver rammed a construction vehicle into a bus and police car on a highway Thursday, wounding two officers before he was shot dead, police said, the latest in a string of attacks by militants using heavy machinery against Israeli targets.

Witnesses described a harrowing sight of a towering yellow front loader speeding along Jerusalem’s Begin Highway, dragging the police car, flipping it into the air and trying to crush it with its front shovel.

Begin Highway is a main thoroughfare connecting the city’s north and south. Witnesses said the attacker apparently worked at a nearby construction site. There was no immediate claim of responsibility and police said the man was not carrying identification.

“It was simply an attack meant to murder innocent people,” Mayor Nir Barkat told Channel 2 television. He called for the demolition of the attacker’s home, a tactic that has drawn international criticism in the past. Barkat said home demolitions are needed to deter other attacks.

The rampage came as Israel prepared to celebrate Purim, a holiday in which schools are closed, children dress up in costumes and families are out and about at parties and public events.

Barkat said the attack would not stop next week’s celebrations. “We need to get back to our routine as fast as possible to show the terrorists that they won’t ruin our holiday,” he said.

Man says he chased, shot driver
One witness, a taxi driver identified as “Dor,” told Israel Radio that he chased the driver as he watched the attack unfold.

“I saw the police car fly into the air. He flipped it over twice, then continued dragging it toward a bus that was stuck in traffic,” he said. He told the station he fired four shots at the man, wounding him. “Then a policeman came with his M-16 and finished him off,” he said.

Deputy police chief Nisso Shachar said the attacker was first spotted by a traffic police car. “The officer saw the bulldozer lift up a police squad car with its shovel after trying to squash it,” he said. “It is without a doubt a terror attack.”

Schachar said the man was killed and an open copy of the Quran, Islam’s holy book, was found in the vehicle. He said the presence of the book indicated the attacker was affiliated with or influenced by Islamic radicals. Police said the two wounded officers were lightly hurt.

Third bulldozer attack in past 8 months
It was the third bulldozer attack in Jerusalem in the past eight months.

Last July, a Palestinian smashed cars and a bus with his heavy construction vehicle in central Jerusalem, killing three people and wounding dozens. Three weeks later, a Palestinian attacker driving a construction vehicle rammed a bus, overturned a car and wounded five people before he was shot dead.

In September, a Palestinian driver rammed his car into a crowd of Israeli soldiers, wounding 19 people, before he was shot dead.

All of the attackers were from east Jerusalem, where Palestinian residents hold Israeli ID cards and can move freely about Israel.

New surge in Gaza fighting
The attack came amid a new surge in fighting in the Gaza Strip, about 50 miles southwest of Jerusalem.

An Israeli air strike early Thursday killed two Islamic Jihad militants and wounded another, bringing to four the number of group members killed by Israel in less than 24 hours and drawing retaliatory rocket fire at Israel.

Islamic Jihad said the three men were returning together to their homes in the Mughazi refugee camp in central Gaza after a night spent on patrol along the Gaza-Israel border when they were targeted.

The Israeli military said an aircraft attacked the three armed men after they fired an anti-tank missile at troops on the Israeli side of the border fence. No soldiers were reported injured.

An Israeli airstrike Wednesday evening killed two members of Islamic Jihad — an Iranian and Syrian-backed militant group.

Vow of revenge
Islamic Jihad official Abu Ahmed vowed Thursday morning that his group would avenge the killings.

“Our rockets and our resistance will not stop,” he said. “We know where and when we will take revenge for these crimes.”

Later on Thursday three rockets fired from Gaza landed in empty ground in southern Israel, the military said. There were no reports of casualties.

There has been sporadic violence in Gaza since Israel ended a fierce three-week offensive on Jan. 18. Egypt has been trying to broker a cease-fire since then.

Supporters of the Pakistan Muslim League (N) chant slogans during a protest against the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore

LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani investigators were following “important leads” to identify who was behind the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said on Wednesday.

The ambush in broad daylight, and the apparent ease with which around a dozen gunmen escaped after a firefight with police of almost 30 minutes, sent shudders through a world fearful of nuclear-armed Pakistan’s inability to contain rising militancy.  “We also have some important leads that would eventually unearth people responsible for this terrible act,” Qureshi told a news conference with his Sri Lankan counterpart in Islamabad.

Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama said this was the first attack on its nationals outside the country and he did not rule out possibility that the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) movement was involved.

Desperate for leads, police rounded up scores of people without establishing any link, according to officials, although one mid-level officer in the probe told Reuters a cellphone had been found that led to the arrest of at least one real suspect.

Seven Pakistanis, including six police and the driver of a bus carrying match officials, were killed in Tuesday’s attack on the Sri Lankan team as it was being driven to the Gadaffi Stadium for the third day of a match against Pakistan.

Six Sri Lankan players were wounded along with two team officials, including a British assistant coach. They flew back to Colombo along with the rest of the tour party on Tuesday night.

“SITTING DUCKS”

ICC match referee Chris Broad told a news conference in London he and other match officials had been left like “sitting ducks” by a lack of security.

The Punjab government has offered a reward of around $125,000 for information on the attackers, who were armed with AK 47s, hand grenades and rocket propelled grenades.

Television footage showed gunmen wearing track suits and trainers and shalwar kameez, traditional long shirt and baggy pants. Some appeared to be barely 20 years old.

They appeared to leave the scene of the attack quite calmly, walking and on motor cycles.

Pakistan has reeled under a wave of bomb and gun attacks in recent years, mostly carried out by Islamist militants linked to the Taliban or al Qaeda, but arch nationalists would relish a link being found between rival India and the Lahore attack.

Pakistan’s pro-West President Asif Ali Zardari wrote in a column for the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that the “terrorist attack against the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore shows once again the evil we are confronting.”

The targeting of a visiting cricket team from a friendly country stunned Pakistanis whose love of the sport only comes second to religion in terms of forging a spirit of unity.

The reverberations were felt across the cricketing world and beyond, with U.S. President Barack Obama expressing deep concern.

U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation director Robert Mueller held talks with Pakistani officials in Islamabad on Wednesday to follow up on the probe into the Mumbai attacks, having already met with Indian officials in New Delhi.

The United States wants Pakistan focused on fighting terrorism, but there are fears Zardari’s civilian government could be engulfed by crises less than a year after taking power.

Aside from militancy radiating across the northwest from the borders with Afghanistan, Pakistan desperately needs billions of dollars of aid to supplement a bailout by the International Monetary Fund last November.

Elections to parliament’s upper house, the Senate, were held on Wednesday under the shadow of a political crisis that sparked street agitation in the past week and sent share prices tumbling.

But the Karachi index bounced nearly 4 percent by Wednesday afternoon thanks to support buying from state-run institutions.

POSSIBLE SUSPECTS

There is a long list of possible suspects for the attack in Lahore. The Tamil Tigers are close to defeat in northern Sri Lanka and have a history of deadly guerrilla attacks.

“LTTE definitely, we believe have outside links and international connections to other terrorist organizations but these are matters that we cannot discuss in the open,” Bogollagama said.

Speculation has otherwise focused largely on two Pakistani jihadi groups — Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Laskhar-Jhangvi (LeJ), as well as the Pakistani Taliban.

LeJ, a Sunni Muslim group, is regarded as a cat’s paw for al Qaeda in Pakistan and has been linked to several high-profile strikes including the suicide truck bomb attack that killed 55 people at Islamabad’s Marriott hotel last September.

Pakistan has arrested a few LeT members after India and the United States said the group was responsible for the slaughter of about 170 people by gunmen in the Indian city of Mumbai last November. The group is also said to have some links to al Qaeda.

Formed to fight Indian rule in Kashmir, LeT has had good relations with Pakistani intelligence agencies in the past, and there is pressure on Pakistan to cut any remaining jihadi ties.

Several observers noted some similarities between the Lahore and Mumbai attacks.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (L) and outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert smile during a meeting in Jerusalem March 3, 2009.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized Israel Wednesday over plans to demolish Palestinian homes in Arab East Jerusalem and said Washington would engage Israeli leaders on Jewish settlements.

Calling the planned destruction of more than 80 dwellings “unhelpful,” Clinton said after talks with Palestinian leaders: “It is an issue that we intend to raise with the government of Israel and the government at the municipal level in Jerusalem.”  Israel says the homes slated for demolition were built without permits.

Palestinians say authorization from Israel’s Jerusalem municipality is nearly impossible to obtain. They accuse Israel of trying to drive them out of East Jerusalem, territory captured in a 1967 war, to make room for Jewish families.

Israel considers all of Jerusalem its “united and eternal” capital, a claim that has not won international recognition. The Palestinian Authority wants East Jerusalem to be the capital of a Palestinian state.

At a news conference with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the occupied West Bank, Clinton stopped short of repeating U.S. calls for an immediate cessation of Israeli settlement expansion but promised to follow up on the issue.

“We will be looking for a way to put it on the table along with all the other issues that need to be discussed and resolved,” she said.

“I think at this time, we should wait until we have a new Israeli government. That will be soon and then we will look at whatever tools are available,” Clinton said repeating her support for creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

PEACE PARTNERS

Abbas said that unless Israel’s incoming leaders were committed to a two-state solution and halted settlement construction and Jerusalem demolitions, “we will not consider them as peace partners.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas hold a joint news conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah March 4, 2009

Clinton is on her first visit to the region as secretary of state during a time of political transition in Israel, which held an election on February 10 that led to right-winger Benjamin Netanyahu being invited to form a government by April 3.

The Likud party leader’s reluctance to commit himself to the creation of a Palestinian state could put him on a collision course with the Obama White House.

With Israel still in political flux and peace talks with the Palestinians stalled, Clinton used her Middle East visit to announce Tuesday a new approach to improve U.S. relations with Syria.

She said two U.S. officials would go to Damascus for preliminary discussions. Political analysts said the overture could pave the way for a resumption of Israeli-Syrian negotiations and weaken Syria’s ties with Iran and Palestinian and Lebanese militant groups.

In a show of support for Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, Clinton called it the only legitimate government of the Palestinian people.

The Authority has held sway only in the West Bank after Hamas Islamists wrested control of the Gaza Strip from his Fatah faction in fighting in 2007.

The West shuns Hamas over its refusal to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept existing interim peace deals.

Clinton has said a durable ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, where Israel in December launched a devastating 22-day offensive, hinged on Hamas stopping cross-border rocket salvoes.

Hospital staff carry Sri Lankan cricket player Tharanga Paranavitana at a local hospital in Lahore March 3, 2009 after a shooting incident.

LAHORE, Pakistan – At least a dozen men ambushed Sri Lanka’s cricket team with rifles, grenades and rocket launchers Tuesday as they drove to the stadium ahead of a match in Pakistan, killing six policemen and a driver.

The attackers struck as a convoy carrying the squad and match officials reached a traffic circle 300 yards from the main sports stadium in the eastern city of Lahore, triggering a 15-minute gunbattle with police guarding the vehicles.  Seven players, an umpire and a coach were wounded, none with life-threatening injuries.  The assault was one of the worst terrorist attacks on a sports team since Palestinian militants killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Tuesday’s attackers melted away into the city, and none was killed or captured, city police chief Haji Habibur Rehman said. Authorities did not speculate on the identities of the attackers or their motives, but the chief suspects will be Islamist militants, some with links to al-Qaida, who have staged high-profile attacks on civilian targets before.

The bus driver, Mohammad Khalil, accelerated as bullets ripped into the vehicle and explosions rocked the air, steering the team to the safety of the stadium. The players — some of them wounded — ducked down and shouted “Go! Go!” as he drove through the ambush.

‘In a state of war’
The attack reinforced perceptions that nuclear-armed Pakistan is unable to control a raging militancy that is increasingly threatening to destabilize the nation of 170 million.

The head of Pakistan’s Interior Ministry, Rehman Malik, said the country was “in a state of war.”

“We will flush out all these terrorists from this country,” he vowed late Tuesday.

Some of the gunmen who attacked Sri Lanka's cricket team in Lahore were caught on camera

Sri Lanka had agreed to this tour — allowing Pakistan to host its first test matches in 14 months — only after India and Australia backed out of scheduled trips over security concerns. The assault will end hopes of international cricket teams — or any sports teams — playing in the country for months, if not years.

Tuesday’s attack came three months after the Mumbai terror strikes that killed 164 people. Those raids were allegedly carried out by Pakistan militants, and the assault in Lahore resembled them in many respects. Both were coordinated, used multiple gunmen, apparently in teams of two, who were armed with explosives and assault rifles and apparently had little fear of death or capture.

Authorities will also consider possible links to Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger separatist rebels who are being badly hit in a military offensive at home, though Sri Lankan military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said it was unlikely the group was involved.  Authorities canceled the test match against Pakistan’s national team, and Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa ordered his foreign minister to immediately travel to Pakistan to help assist in the team’s evacuation.

A special flight is expected to bring the players home in the early hours of Wednesday, according to a Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry official.

‘Highly trained and highly armed’
TV footage of the attack showed at least two pairs of gunmen with backpacks firing from a stretch of grass and taking cover behind a small monument before moving on. It was taken from the offices of a Pakistani news channel overlooking the site of the ambush.

“These people were highly trained and highly armed. The way they were holding their guns, the way they were taking aim and shooting at the police, it shows they were not ordinary people,” said Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab province. “This is the same style as the terrorists who attacked Mumbai.”

Investigators found a plethora of weapons — including rocket-propelled grenades, sub-machine guns and plastic bombs — as they searched the scene, Punjab police chief Khwaja Khalid Farooq said.

The attackers also had walkie-talks, mineral water, dried fruit and backpacks, he said. “They came with proper planning,” he said.

An Associated Press reporter saw police handling what looked like two suicide jackets.

“It is a terrible incident, and I am lost for words,” said Steve Davis, an Australian who was to have umpired the match.

Resemble Pashtuns?
Lahore police chief Rehman said “between 12 and 14 men” took part in the assault and they resembled Pashtuns, the ethnic group that hails from close to the Afghan border, the stronghold of al-Qaida and the Taliban. He said officers were hunting them down.

Two Sri Lankan players — Thilan Samaraweera and Tharanga Paranavitana — were being treated for bullet wounds in a hospital but were stable, said Chamara Ranavira, a spokesman for the Sri Lankan High Commission.

Umpire Ahsan Raza was hit in his abdomen, medical Superintendent of the Services Hospital, Mohammad Javed, said.

Team captain Mahela Jayawardene and four other players had minor injuries, the Sri Lankan Cricket Board said. Ranavira said British assistant coach Paul Farbrace also sustained minor injuries.

Haider Ashraf, another police officer, said six policemen and a driver of a Pakistan Cricket Board vehicle were killed.

Sri Lankan Foreign Secretary Palitha Kohona said little could be done to stop such an attack, saying “there is never enough security to counter a well organized and determined terrorist group.”  The Dubai-based International Cricket Council condemned the attack. But ICC President David Morgan told the British Broadcasting Corp. that the organization had no role in deciding on whether Pakistan was safe enough for a tour since Sri Lanka and Pakistan agreed to the match.

One militant group likely to fall under particular suspicion is Lashkar-e-Taiba, the network blamed for the Mumbai terror attacks in November, in which 10 gunmen staged a three-day siege targeting luxury hotels, a Jewish center and other sites.

In the past, India and Pakistan have blamed each other for attacks on their territories. Any allegations like that will trigger fresh tensions between the countries, which are already dangerously high.