At Least 15 Die as Suicide Bomb Shreds Bus in Israel
By JAMES BENNET with TERENCE NEILAN
nytimes.com
JERUSALEM, March 5 — At least 15 people were killed and about 40 were wounded today in a suicide bombing on board a bus in Haifa in northern Israel, the police said.
"There are dozens of casualties, among them seriously injured," Avi Zohar, a rescue services spokesman, told Israeli television. It was the first suicide attack in Israel since Jan. 5, when 23 people died in twin blasts in Tel Aviv.
The explosion occurred after the bus had stopped on a main street in the Carmelia neighborhood, the Haifa police chief, Yaacov Borovsky, said.
"This is a terror attack," Mr. Borovsky added. "We are talking about suicide bomber."
Bodies and wreckage were strewn across the street, rescue officials told news agencies.
Witnesses said the explosion ripped off the roof of the bus, but other reports said the bus was destroyed in the blast at about 2:17 p.m.
"The bus exploded," a witness who gave his name as Dore told Israel Radio, Reuters reported. "The entire bus was damaged. The entire bus caught fire. The entire top of the bus is totally destroyed — the windows, doors. Nothing is left."
"I saw people dying, being burned to death," another witness told Channel One television.
Officials said because of the hour, the bus would have been packed with students from the nearby University of Haifa.
The Israeli government said the Palestinian Authority, led by Yasir Arafat, was to blame for the attack.
"The Palestinian Authority has been doing absolutely nothing to stop this horrendous blood trail of killing and carnage. There was a deceptive lull in attacks mainly because of the success of our security services," a government spokesman, said.
The Palestinian Authority issued a statement condemning the bombing.
"The leadership announces its condemnation to this operation in which civilians, who are not part of the war of annihilation waged by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people, were killed," it said.
Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a spokesman for the militant Hamas group, praised the attack but did not claim responsibility, The Associated Press reported. "We will not stop our resistance," he said. "We are not going to give up in the face of the daily killing" of Palestinians.
The attack coincides with a two-week-old Israeli military offensive against Hamas strongholds in the Gaza Strip in which dozens of Palestinians have been killed, including some civilians.
Earlier today Israeli troops arrested 20 Palestinians throughout the West Bank and demolished the home of an Islamic militant in a continued security clampdown.
The fresh sweep followed a day of clashes in which three Palestinians were killed and Israel drew rare criticism from the White House over Palestinian civilian casualties.
Palestinian witnesses said troops entered the West Bank cities of Qalqilya and Jericho today, as well as villages outside Bethlehem, to make the arrests, Reuters reported.
"We condemn these incursions into Qalqilya and Jericho," a Palestinian cabinet minister, Saeb Erekat, said. "The Israelis are exercising their authority either by reoccupation or incursion to arrest, to kill, and to assassinate."
On Monday, while arresting a leader and several members of Hamas in a refugee camp south of Gaza, Israeli forces killed eight Palestinians, including gunmen who engaged in a firefight. Among the dead was a pregnant woman, killed when a wall fell on her as soldiers demolished the home of a neighbor, an Islamic Jihad militant.
Israel expressed regret for the death, while blaming terrorists whom it described as hiding in a civilian population.
At the White House, Ari Fleischer, the press secretary, said when asked about Israel's policy of demolishing the homes of those it accuses of terrorism, "We have long stated that Israel has a right to defend itself, but it's important for Israel to act in a way that is reflective of the needs and legitimate aspirations of the innocent."
He continued, "We have concerns about actions that go beyond and that bring harm to the innocent, including innocent Palestinians."
An Israeli woman was stabbed and wounded on Tuesday in what the police described as a terrorist attack.
More than 60 Palestinians have been killed since the middle of February in Israel's stepped-up operations in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. |
