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Deadly Blast Strikes Outside Jerusalem’s Central Bus Station

23/03/2011

Jerusalem - A small bomb exploded at a crowded bus stop outside

Jerusalem’s main bus station on Wednesday, killing one woman and leaving

at least 24 other people injured, two seriously. It was the first bombing

inside Jerusalem in four years.

Israeli paramedics helped wounded people at the scene of an explosion

outside the Jerusalem's central bus station on Wedneday.

Yitzhak Aharonovitch, the minister of internal security, said the device was

relatively small, weighing from two pounds to a little over four pounds, andhad been left in a bag near a bus stop at the western edge of the city,

outside a convention center and across from the central station. News

media reported that there was no sign of a body at the scene to indicate a

suicide attack.

Most of those injured were standing on the street waiting for the bus to

arrive. Television images showed people carried away in stretchers.

At the time of the blast, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was

meeting with senior members of the security establishment for

consultations about the escalating violence along the border with Gaza.

A stray Israeli mortar shell killed three Palestinian youths and a 60-year-old

man on Tuesday as Israel responded to a rocket attack. On Tuesday night,

the Israeli Air Force killed four militants in a car in Gaza, all members of

Islamic Jihad, the organization and the Israeli military said. The army saidthe men were preparing to launch rockets at Israel. Late Tuesday and early

Wednesday, Palestinian militants fired rockets deep into southern Israel, and

Israel responded with airstrikes in Gaza.

Mr. Netanyahu was supposed to leave for Russia at 5 p.m. local time, about

two hours after the explosion, but a spokesman for the prime minister said

he had decided to delay his departure.



Israel’s interior minister, Eli Yishai, told reporters at the scene that Israel

was witnessing “an escalation on all fronts.” Checkpoints have been set up

on roads across Israel as police search for suspects.

“The actions of the terrorist organizations obligate us to act,” he said,

without elaborating.

Palestinian leaders in the West Bank condemned the bombing, The

Associated Press reported. In Gaza, two militant groups, Islamic Jihad and

the Popular Resistance Committees, praised and welcomed the attack. But

there were no claims of responsibility.

After the explosion, Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, said he would

consult with the army chief of staff and the minister of home front security.

"We will not tolerate attacks on Israeli civilians, neither in the southern

communities nor in Jerusalem," he said in a statement.

At least one Katyusha-type rocket hit a street in the center of the southernIsraeli city of Beersheva on Wednesday morning, slightly wounding one man

and causing damage to nearby houses. Several mortar shells also fell on the

Israeli side of the border with Gaza, the Israeli military said.

Mr. Barak said that Israel held Hamas responsible for Wednesday’s rocket

attacks, and added that "responsibility comes with a price."

The Israeli army will "continue to act to protect citizens of the state and to

carry out preventive actions" along the Gaza border, he added. "There will

be ups and downs. It will not be over by tomorrow, but we are determined to

restore security and calm."

The bomb at the bus stop on Wednesday detonated as two buses pulled into

the crowded stop, a passenger on one of the buses, Yair Zimmerman, said

in an interview. Small holes were seen in the body of one of the buses,

suggesting the explosive device had been packed with ball-bearings, toincrease the level of damage.



“I knew instantly that it was a terrorist attack,” he said, describing a chaotic

scene cut through with the smell of burnt plastic and blood.

The woman who was killed suffered a chest injury in the blast and died

shortly after, according to officials at Hadassah Hospital. They did not

provide any information on her identity.

The police were searching for a car that they said had been seen fleeing the

scene. Dozens of police officers and soldiers combed through debris for

fragments of the bomb. The bus station is adjacent to the ultra-orthodox

neighborhood of Givat Shaul, and hundreds of ultra-orthodox young men

gathered at the scene after the explosion.

Two weeks ago, a municipal worker lost his hand when a pipe bomb

exploded in a trash bag in the southern section of Jerusalem. There were no

claims of responsibility or arrests in that case.

The Jerusalem police commander, Aharon Franco, said in a televised

interview that the police would also investigate whether there was any linkbetween this attack and earlier pipe bomb explosion. “Despite the calm of

the last few years, we are calling on the public to be alert,” the police

commander said.

Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem and J. David Goodman from New

York. Ethan Bronner contributed reporting from Jerusalem, and Fares Akram

from Gaza.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/world/middleeast/24israel.html?

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deadly blast strikes outside jerusalem

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