Site of car attack that killed Shalom Yohai Sherki
Site of car attack that killed Shalom Yohai SherkiYonatan Sindel/Flash 90

A Palestinian driver deliberately rammed his car into a Jerusalem bus stop this week and killed an Israeli man in a "horrible attack", police chief Yohanan Danino said on Saturday.

"Today we can say that it is a horrible attack," Danino said in a statement after an investigation into Wednesday's incident. He ruled out initial suggestions that it had been an accident.

Shalom Yohai Sherki, 26, and Shira Klein, 20, were seriously injured in the attack on the bus stop in Jerusalem.

The driver, a 37-year-old Palestinian from Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem, was arrested and interrogated by police. He was later named as Khaled Kutina. 

The terrorist's pregnant wife claimed in interviews with Palestinian Arab media on Friday that her husband is not at all interested in politics and news, so the incident was not a terror attack but "a car accident caused by the weather."

On Thursday night, police announced their suspicions that the "car accident" was indeed a terror attack, with evidence from the scene including the way the car struck the bus stop where the two were waiting strengthening that assessment.

Thousands attended Sherki's funeral in Jerusalem on Thursday, which was attended by the Chief Rabbis of Israel and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat. 

He was the son of the popular Rabbi Uri Sherki, a prominent religious-Zionist scholar, as well as a brother of Channel Two journalist Yair Sherki. 

Friends and teachers at Sherki's former school in Bet El - where he worked as a youth counselor following his IDF service - expressed their shock and sorrow at the loss of "such a special person."