Ruby Ma’atabi. The 18-year-old Jerusalemite who escaped death twice during a terrorist attack on a bus in East Talpiot. Photo: Screenshot.

An 18-year-old boy stared death in the face twice on Tuesday, when caught up in the hysteria that ensued when two terrorists launched a coordinated attack on a bus in Jerusalem’s East Talpiot (Armon Hanatziv) neighborhood.

Ruby Ma’atabi recalled for Israeli website nrg what happened when one of the terrorists, brandishing a firearm, began to open fire on passengers on the Egged bus: “The terrorist began shooting toward the back of the bus, where I was sitting. He shot an older man who was sitting in front of me.”

“Then, he grabbed a knife and started stabbing me in the throat and I managed to flee. I hid next to the door and tried to open it but I couldn’t. Then another terrorist came along, grabbed me and tried to choke me. I freed myself from him when the other grabbed me by the shirt. At that moment I tried to do everything in my power to grab something myself, but there was nothing to grab. So I tried just to save myself, to escape. I felt the fear, either I make it or I die,” Ma’atabi recounted.

“The incident started when I got on the number 78 bus line this morning in Armon Hanatziv. Two terrorists got on the bus and sat down; they didn’t seem suspicious. As soon as the bus began moving, one of the terrorists yelled ‘Allahu akbar‘ and began shooting toward the rear of the bus,” he said.

Two Israelis were killed in Tuesday’s bus attack, when the terrorists began shooting and stabbing passengers before being shot by police. Another Israeli man, a 59-year-old rabbi, was separately killed in Jerusalem that same morning when an east Jerusalem man drove a company car into hapless bystanders at a bus station.

More than 30 attacks have been carried out against Israelis in the last several weeks in a wave of violence that began around the Jewish high holidays. Additionally, at least 30 Palestinians, including 11 attackers, have been killed and hundreds injured in ongoing clashes between Palestinian rioters and Israeli security forces.