On July 2, 2008, two Israelis were killed and 30 others injured when atractor driven by an Arab resident of east Jerusalem trampled over pedestriansand vehicles and flipped over two buses in central Jerusalem. A state ofemergency was declared in the city following the attack. Jerusalem Police ChiefAharon Franco told the media that a tractor driven by a terrorist began hittingvehicles and flipped over two buses. There was a similar attack a week later.
On August 4, 2008, 16 police border guards of the Chinese Ministry of PublicSecurity were killed at Kashgar in the Xinjiang province, when they wereallegedly attacked by two Uighurs belonging to the Islamic Movement of EastTurkestan (IMET). According to the initial version of the local authorities, theUighurs came to a border post in a stolen heavy truck, jumped out and threwhand-grenades at a party of police guards doing their morning exercise.Subsequently, they said they actually threw home-made explosives at thepolicemen who were jogging.
According to a foreign blogger based in Xinjiang, there were unconfirmed reportsthat the police guards actually died when the two Uighurs drove their heavytruck into them. They had no explosives or weapons. If true, this seems to havebeen a copy-cat emulation of the modus operandi (MO) adopted by Palestinianterrorists against the Israelis in East Jerusalem.
The Chinese have not admitted that the police guards were killed when the truckdrove into them. They continue to maintain that the police guards were killed byexplosives. They seem to be worried that this MO might be copied by otherterrorist groups in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong during the Olympics.
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B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. ofIndia, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies,Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies.
