Just sick of the terrorism. Gotta send a signal, we are serious. That is the signal. Negotiating with him is not.
Three killed in bus suicide bombing
By David Rudge
PARDESS HANNA (November 30) - Three passengers were killed and nine wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus near Camp 80, an IDF training base on the Wadi Ara highway near Pardess Hanna last night.
In a separate terrorist incident yesterday, St.-Sgt. Yaron Pikholtz, 20, of Ramat Gan was killed and a second soldier wounded in a shooting attack.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided not to postpone his trip to the US because of the attacks.
"In the last 48 hours since the [Zinni/Burns] visit began, we have seven dead and more than 50 wounded," Sharon told reporters at Ben-Gurion Airport before departing.
"We see Arafat as directly responsible for the acts of murder and terror and we will act in order to put an end to these acts of terror," he said.
Eyewitnesses said the No. 823 Egged bus, en route from Nazareth via Afula and Hadera to Tel Aviv, was moving when the explosion occurred.
Police Insp.-Gen. Shlomo Aharonishky told reporters at the scene that it was not clear where the terrorist had boarded the bus and this and other aspects were being investigated.
Bus driver Tal Goldberg, however, who escaped with relatively minor injuries, said a well-dressed, young Arab with a moustache, had boarded his bus at Umm el-Fahm.
According to Goldberg, two people kissed the man on the cheeks as he boarded the bus.
"When we got to the Camp 80 junction, there was a huge blast... There is a certain fear about stopping at Umm el-Fahm or in the Wadi Ara area, but this is the service we give and we stop there and this is when people got on board. From Umm el-Fahm, from inside Israel, this is what we get," he said.
Islamic Jihad and Fatah both claimed responsibility for the bombing, Israel Radio reported. Islamic Jihad gave the bomber's name as Fares Abu Suleiman, of a village near Jenin.
Aharonishky said it would be wrong to link the bombing or Tuesday's shooting attack in Afula to the IDF withdrawal from the southern part of Jenin earlier on Tuesday.
The suicide bomber apparently aroused no suspicions, paying his fare with a NIS 200 note, and took his seat near the middle of the bus.
One of the wounded was reported to be in satisfactory condition after surgery. The others were said to be suffering from light wounds and shock.
Egged spokesman Ron Ratner said the attack was reminiscent of those that had occurred during 1994-96, when there was a wave of suicide bombings aboard buses.
"The only thing that I can say that we were lucky about is that there were few passengers aboard at the time and there were few casualties, despite the tremendous force of the explosion," he said.
He said Egged is in close contact with police and the security forces on a regular basis, even though there have not been attacks aboard buses recently or any warnings of pending ones.
Security forces in the North and along the Green Line have been on heightened alert since the end of last week, amid warnings of pending attacks in the region.
Senior police officers, however, noted that more attention had been given to areas where there were likely to be crowds inside the cities. The bus bombing, therefore, came as something of a surprise.
The explosion occurred around 8:30. It is thought that the terrorist may have decided to detonate his bomb then, because the bus was close to a gas station, and he may have hoped the blast would also ignite it and spread to the nearby army base.
Fleets of ambulances reached the scene within minutes, and the wounded were taken to Hillel Yaffe Hospital in Hadera.
Large units of police, led by Northern region chief Cmdr. Ya'acov Borovsky and Coastal and Haifa district chief Asst. Cmdr. Moshe Waldman, went to the scene.
Sappers cordoned off the area and warned soldiers on guard duty in watch towers at Camp 80 to leave their posts in case there were more explosives on the bus.
In a Palestinian refugee camp in nearby Jenin, from where several previous suicide bombers have left for their deadly missions, about 3,000 people marched and celebrated after the bus attack, witnesses said.
"Sharon, prepare the body bags," they chanted, the AP reported.
The Palestinian Authority condemned the suicide attack.
"The Palestinian leadership condemns the attack on Israeli civilians and the authority reaffirms that it is working in its full capacity to put an end to all sorts of attacks against Israeli civilians," a PA spokesman said.
He said Palestinian security agencies were instructed to investigate the attack, "chase the perpetrators and bring them to justice."
"We call on the Israeli side to stop its assaults and to stop assassinations, which only increase tension," the spokesman said.
(News agencies contributed to this report.) |
