MERON
JUNCTION, Israel, Aug 4 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Just hours
after the bus bombing in Jerusalem which killed 9 Israelis and injured
over 50, many of them military officers, a Palestinian man armed with
a pistol went on a shooting spree outside the Old City in east
Jerusalem, killing one Israeli security guard 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, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
News
of the bus blast came as the Israeli cabinet was gathered for its
weekly meeting.
Earlier
in Northern Israel on Sunday, 12 Israelis were killed and around 50
injured, several of them seriously, when a bomb ripped through a bus,
carrying several Israeli soldiers, hours after the Israeli army
dynamited eight Palestinian homes in the West Bank.
The
explosion was claimed by the Ezzedine El Qassam Brigades, the military
wing of the Islamic resistance group Hamas, reported Qatar’s
Al-Jazeera satellite channel.
The
statement by the Brigades did not mention the name of the resistance
fighter who carried out the attack, in a bid to protect his family and
home from Israel’s new policy of exiling the families of resistance
fighters, and dynamiting their homes.
Al-Jazeera’s
correspondent said that the statement of the Brigades in which they
claimed responsibility said that this was the second attack in a
series of revenge attacks that they are planning in retaliation for
the killing of Salah Shehada, who was the military leader of Hamas.
Salah
Shehada was killed along with 16 civilians, 12 of them children, in an
Israeli air strike in densely populated Gaza neighborhood, early
Tuesday, July 23.
One
witness told Israeli public radio the explosion blew apart one side of
the bus near the town of Safad, north of Lake Galilee.
The
explosion occurred at a roadside rest area close to the Jewish holy
site marking the tomb of rabbi Shimoen Bar Yohai, public television
said.
Police
spokesman Ofer Sivan said the blast was a “terrorist attack”
although he said police did not immediately know if the explosion was
caused by a resistance bomber or a bag full of explosives left on the
vehicle, which had stopped near Meron junction, Agence France-Presse
(AFP) reported.
It
was the first bombing in Israel since Wednesday, when the brigades
killed seven people in a bomb attack at occupied Jerusalem’s Hebrew
university.
Meanwhile,
five Israeli soldiers and a Jewish settler were injured in two
separate attacks in the northern West Bank Sunday, Israeli military
sources and Jewish settlers said.
In
the re-occupied city of Nablus, three Israeli soldiers conducting
searches for militants and bomb-making factories were injured when a
remote-controlled explosive device was detonated near them, the army
said.
One of the soldiers was seriously hurt and two slightly, an army
spokesman said.
And
a Jewish settler was seriously injured when Palestinian gunmen opened
fire on his car near the settlement of Avnei Hefetz, near the West
Bank town of Tulkarem, settler sources said.
As
Israeli troops came to the rescue the shooting continued, leaving one
soldier seriously injured and another slightly.
