NEWS: Nine Israelis killed in bus blast

Adam · Aug 5, 2002

Nine Israelis killed in bus blast

Three dead in Jerusalem shooting; army kills Palestinian intruder

MERON JUNCTION, Israel: Palestinian militants launched a wave of attacks on Sunday, with at least nine Israelis killed in a bus bombing at a junction, three dead in a Jerusalem shooting spree and a rash of other strikes that left more than 70 injured.

Overall, 14 people were killed in the violence from the far north of Israel, where a Palestinian suicide bomber blew apart a civilian bus near Safad, to an armed Palestinian frogman who was shot dead in a failed raid on a coastal Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip.

The massive eruption of violence appeared to be the bloody vengeance threatened by all Palestinian factions after an Israeli air raid killed the military chief of the main Islamist group Hamas and 14 other people, nine of them children, on July 22.

It also withered hopes that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon might meet with two new Palestinian ministers seen by Israel as moderate alternatives to Yasser Arafat. A suicide bomber from Hamas blew up yet another Israeli bus early Sunday, killing nine Israelis - including three soldiers - as a fireball ripped the vehicle apart near a Jewish shrine close to the town of Safad, north of Lake Galilee. Another 50 people were injured, several seriously.

Police later confirmed the blast was the work of a suicide bomber, though little evidence remained of the perpetrator's body. Government spokesman Avi Pazner said Israel will fight "without mercy" against the perpetrators of the latest attack in the 22-month-old Palestinian intifada.

But Palestinian officials, who denounced the attack, insisted Israel was to blame because of its hard-line policies in the territories, where it has re-occupied almost the entire West Bank and sealed off the Gaza Strip.

Hamas' military wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassem Brigades, said in a statement on Lebanese television the suicide attack was a "further riposte to the killing of our leader Salah Shehade" in Israel's internationally criticised air raid on Gaza City.

Just hours after the bus bombing, a Palestinian man armed with a pistol went on a shooting spree outside the Old City in east Jerusalem, killing an Israeli working for a phone company before being gunned down in a shoot-out with the police.

A Palestinian bystander was also killed in the exchange of fire, which left a dozen people wounded. In the Gaza Strip, an armed Palestinian wearing a wetsuit was shot and killed on the northern coast near the Dugit settlement, the army said. The frogman was spotted by an army observation post as he left the sea and approached the settlement, it said.

The Israeli army then launched an incursion into a nearby Palestinian area, destroying a holiday camp run by the Palestinian youth ministry and another building, a Palestinian official said.

Seven Israelis were injured in separate attacks in the West Bank, including four soldiers whose jeep was blown off a settlers' road near Ramallah in a blast claimed by the secular Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

A Jewish settler was also ambushed in his car near Tulkarem in the north. Two soldiers who arrived to rescue him were also shot and injured, in an attack claimed by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Arafat's Fatah movement.

In the West Bank, the Israeli army has been going house-to-house in search of explosives and suspected suicide bombers and their handlers in the Casbah, or Old City, of Nablus. It said three soldiers were wounded by an explosive device during the operation on Sunday, one of them moderately.

News of the bus blast came as the Israeli cabinet was gathered for its weekly meeting. Israeli radio said Sharon had put off meeting Palestinian finance minister Salam Fayad and interior minister Abdel Razak Yahiya, two moderates on whom Israel is pinning its hopes for reform of the Palestinian Authority, accused of corruption and collusion with armed groups.

Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Sharon, said meetings with the Palestinians were off for now. "What have you got to talk (about) with a Palestinian leadership that continues to harbour and support terrorist activity?" he asked.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell was due to meet a Palestinian delegation in Washington this week, but it was not clear if the meeting was still on after the latest upsurge in attacks. In Washington, leading democratic lawmaker Senator Joseph Lieberman urged the US administration to choke off funding to Hamas from Arab states including Saudi Arabia. "We ought to be doing everything we can to cut the flow of support to Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups," the former vice-presidential candidate said.

The Israeli army pressed ahead on Sunday with its plan to expel relatives of Palestinian militants, ordering a third Palestinian banished from the West Bank, while two others set to be deported appealed their case before a military court.

The army ordered the expulsion of a Palestinian woman, Intissar Adjuri, from the Askar refugee camp near Nablus, to the heavily guarded Gaza Strip, which is sealed off from Israel by electric fences.

Her brother Gaza Kifah Adjuri, also from Askar, and Abdel Nasser Assidi, from the village of Tel, are appealing their expulsion orders to a military tribunal and rulings are expected in the coming days.

All three were among 21 Palestinians arrested last month because they were related to militants who killed 14 people in two bloody July attacks. Their brothers are specifically wanted for a roadside ambush on a bus outside the Jewish settlement of Emmanuel that killed nine Israelis. If the trio is thrown out it will be the first time Israel has used the controversial penalty, which many rights groups slam as collective punishment.

Source.
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NEWS: Nine Israelis killed in bus blast

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