WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A 3-month-old baby killed in Jerusalem when a Palestinian man slammed his car into pedestrians was an American, the United States State Department said on Thursday.

Eight other people were hurt on Wednesday when the driver crashed the vehicle at a light railway stop and then fled before being shot by police, officials said. He later died of his injuries.

"The baby was an American citizen," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters in a briefing on Thursday.

She gave no other details on the infant or the family, citing privacy concerns.

US officials in Jerusalem are assisting the family, she added.

Israeli police identified the driver as Adbel-Rahman Shaloudi, 21, a Palestinian man from East Jerusalem, and called the incident a "terrorist attack."

It was one of the worst spikes in violence in weeks in a city at the heart of the Israeli, Palestinian conflict.