Jerusalem Explosion Leaves 20 Dead

June 18, 2002
By Steve Weizman, Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM –– A Palestinian man detonated nail-studded explosives on a Jerusalem bus crowded with high school students and office workers Tuesday, killing himself and 19 passengers in the city's deadliest suicide attack in six years. Forty people were wounded.

The blast tore through the bus just before 8 a.m., sending bodies flying through windows and peeling off the roof and sides. The attack came as President Bush prepared to make a major Mideast policy statement.

Many of the passengers were students at a nearby high school. Education Minister Limor Livnat said seven students were among the dead and wounded.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon rushed to the scene and vowed to fight Palestinian terror groups, then convened security chiefs for emergency consultations. Tough Israeli retaliation was expected. Earlier this month, Israeli troops blew up buildings in Yasser Arafat's headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah in response to a suicide attack that killed 17 Israelis.

The Islamic militant group Hamas claimed responsibility and identified the assailant as Mohammed al-Ghoul, 22, from the Al Faraa refugee camp near the West Bank city of Nablus. The Palestinian Authority condemned the attack. In 21 months of fighting, Palestinian extremists have carried out 70 suicide bombings.

Tuesday's explosion went off as the bus waited at a crowded intersection in southern Jerusalem. Shlomi Kalderon, 32, had just dropped off his children at kindergarten and was two cars behind the bus at the time of the blast.

"All the pieces went flying up into the air," Kalderon said from a Jerusalem hospital where he was being treated for a whistling in his ears. "People from the cars behind me came running up to the bus and started pulling people out of the windows. They didn't save many. ... I saw a head next to me after the blast."

Rescue workers lined up the dead on a sidewalk and covered them with black plastic bags. A tent was set up where body parts would be identified. One woman screamed at volunteers collecting remains, "Where is my sister? Where is my sister?"

Police said 20 people, including the bomber, were killed in the first suicide bombing in Jerusalem since April 12. It was the deadliest attack in the city since Feb. 25, 1996, when 26 people were killed in a bus explosion. Jerusalem has been hardest hit by the current wave of Palestinian suicide attacks.

A visibly angry Sharon made an unusual visit to the scene 90 minutes after the blast. He inspected the wreckage and then walked slowly past the row of bodies on the sidewalk.

"This terrible thing that we see is a continuation of Palestinian terrorism, and against that terrorism we have to fight and struggle – and that is what we will do," Sharon said, without saying what sort of response might be expected.


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© 2002 The Associated Press
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