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Palestinian Bus Driver Responds To Violence, Killing Seven Israeli Soldiers
JERUSALEM, Feb 14 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Seven Israelis soldiers and one civilian were killed Wednesday as a Palestinian bus driver rammed into a group of Israeli soldiers who were waiting at a bus stop to go to a military base in nearby southern Tel Aviv.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat blamed "Israeli military escalation" for the killing of eight Israelis in the independently inspired "martyr operation".
"What is happening is an Israeli military escalation which is having direct repercussions on the feelings of the Palestinian people," Arafat told journalists in Amman before leaving Jordan for Turkey.
Israeli officials however said they held Arafat responsible for the attack, while caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Barak called on the international community to put pressure on Arafat to end what he called "terror and violence" following the hit-and-run bus attack.
In response to the incident, Barak has sealed off Palestinian-ruled areas while U.S. President George W. Bush was quick to condemn the attack.
Bush said the U.S. would work to help restore calm in the Middle East, however, "The violent cycle of action and reaction, in particular, the escalation this week, has to stop," he said, stating that both Israel and the Palestinians were equally responsible for the escalation in violence.
The incident sent tremors throughout the immediate area of the incident and eyewitnesses said Israelis, including soldiers, fled the scene for fear that the bus might be booby-trapped.
Palestinians reacted with cheers upon hearing of the operation, stating it was a response to more than nearly five months of Israeli violence in which 350 Palestinian civilians lost their lives - many of whom were children - with thousands injured.
Observers speculate that the event that immediately triggered the bus incident may have been Tuesday's helicopter attack and assassination of a member of Arafat's personal security detachment, Masoud Iyyad.
It was the deadliest attack since a triple suicide bombing in Jerusalem in September 1997 and comes just eight days after the election of rightwing Likud leader Ariel Sharon as prime minister, a man despised by Arabs and Muslims for his participation in massacres conducted on Palestinian civilians in several refugee camps.
Israeli officials state they consider it a "deliberate" attack, while Palestinian groups said the 35-year-old driver, identified as Khalil Abu Olbeh, was acting on an individual basis reacting on the escalation of deadly Israeli violence in the occupied territories.
The online edition of the Jerusalem Post, an Israeli daily, reported that the military wing of Islamic resistance movement, Hamas, claimed responsibility for the martyr operation in a phone call to Israeli Radio.
Palestinian news agencies stated that although Hamas welcomed the martyr operation, the group has not claimed any responsibility for the incident.
After hitting the Israeli soldiers, Olbeh fled at high speed while police and a helicopter chased him until the bus collided into a large truck at a main intersection point, where he was arrested.
Police state Olbeh was seriously injured, but still alive. Investigators are trying to speak with him.
A leading Hamas official said the incident was "a legitimate response to five months of Israeli aggression against the Arabs and Palestinians."
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