Five Dead in N. Israel Bus Blast
Reuters
JERUSALEM (March 20) - A suspected Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus in northern Israel on Wednesday, killing at least five people including himself and wounding more than 20 others, police said.
It was the second attack within Israel in 12 hours, denting U.S. efforts to broker an end to almost 18 months of Israeli-Palestinian fighting which has claimed over 1,400 lives. A motorist called Nahum told Israel's Army Radio the bus from the national Egged cooperative blew up in front of him on Wadi Ara road, a central artery running through northern Israel, near the Israeli Arab town of Umm al-Fahm some two miles from the West Bank border.
''There was a huge blast, and the bus kept moving about 30 meters and then stopped,'' he said. ''The bus was completely wrecked. They (passengers) flew from the windows, from the rear.''
Northern police commander Yaacov Borovsky told Channel Two television at least five people were killed and another 20 wounded in ''a serious terrorist attack.'' Earlier Israeli security sources said at least 25 were injured.
A police spokesman said the dead included a Palestinian who detonated a bomb on his person. Suicide bombers have killed scores of people during an uprising against Israeli occupation which erupted in September 2000 after peace talks stalled.
Egged spokesman Ron Ratner said the bus driver had survived the explosion and described a passenger who walked to the back of the vehicle before setting off a bomb.
''The bus was packed with laborers, most of them, it seems, of Arab ethnicity,'' Ratner said. Wadi Ara runs through a predominantly Israeli Arab area south of the Sea of Galilee.
Overnight, border police and civil guard volunteers killed two Palestinian gunmen who had wounded two Israelis in a raid on the community of Aviezer, southwest of Jerusalem, an Israeli police spokesman said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the latest violence, which took place just a day after Vice President Dick Cheney visited the region, and as U.S. special envoy Anthony Zinni was in the midst of efforts to establish a truce-to-talks deal.
02:37 03-20-02
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