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Nineteen people were killed, and nearly 70 were injured in the blast, five of them seriously, when a suicide bomber blew himself up on a Jerusalem bus.
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| By Ellis Shuman June 18, 2002 |
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Nineteen people were killed, and nearly 70 were injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus in southern Jerusalem early Tuesday morning. Many of the bus's passengers were schoolchildren. The suicide bomber reportedly came by foot from the Bethlehem area. Jerusalem Police went on high alert last night due to intelligence warnings of an impending attack.
According to media reports, most of the bus passengers on the 32A line were high school students on their way to school. The explosion occurred at 8 a.m. as the crowded bus waited at a traffic light at the busy Pat intersection, near the Gilo neighborhood. The force of the blast peeled off the roof and sides of the bus, and damage was caused to a nearby car as well.
Jerusalem Police Commander Mickey Levy said the terrorist apparently boarded the bus near the Beit Safafa neighborhood and detonated his explosives shortly afterwards. Levy said Jerusalem Police had been on alert due to intelligence warnings of an impending terrorist attack. "Our forces were stationed in all areas of the city, but the warnings were not specific."
Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert told Army Radio that information received on Monday referred to a different bomber, in a different area of the city.
Media reports indicated that the bomber of the 32A bus made his way to Jerusalem from the Bethlehem area by foot. Both the Hamas and the Fatah issued claims of responsibility for the attack. The bomber was identified as a 23-year-old student from the Nablus area, who was a member of the Hamas. Security sources initially stated that they believed the attack was connected to Monday night's targeted killing of Fatah militant Walid Sbeh, suspected of dispatching a number of suicide bombers. Sbeh was killed by IDF sniper fire in Al-Khader, just west of Bethlehem.
Rami Cohen, who was driving near the bus when it exploded, said many of the passengers were children. "I was stopped at the intersection, when I heard an enormous explosion," he said, reported in ynet. "I ran towards the bus. I saw a young girl covered with blood. I brought her to an ambulance. Passengers helped one another to get out of the bus, from wherever they could."
"There was a huge explosion, smoke and pieces of the bus and body parts were flying everywhere. It was horrible," an eyewitness told Army Radio.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon arrived at the site of the bus bombing and said, "The horrible picture here is stronger than any other words. What kind of Palestinian state do they want to create?" he asked. It was the first time that Sharon had visited the scene of a terrorist attack.
Sharon's spokesman David Baker blamed Palestinian Authority head Yasser Arafat for the bombing attack. "The Palestinian Authority is drenched in terror. This terror has seeped into (Palestinian) society," he said.
"The Palestinian Authority condemns this attack and repeats its position of not condoning the killing of civilians, both Palestinians and Israelis," senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told CNN. "We cannot be blamed for it. We reject any Israeli attempts to assign blame or fingerpointing at us," he said.
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