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The
operation avenged Israel’s assassination of Jihad leader Fathi
Shaqaqi and its daily killing of Palestinian civilians
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OCCUPIED
JERUSALEM, October 22 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – While the
Israeli occupation army continued Tuesday, October 22, demolishing homes
of Palestinian activists, Israeli sources said several soldiers were
among the dead in the bus blast Monday, October 21.
At
least 14 people died in northern Israel when two Palestinian activists
detonated a car bomb, laden with more than 100 Kgs of explosives,
alongside a bus crowded with passengers, mainly Israeli army soldiers,
Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel reported.
"The
blast was so powerful that I flew out of the seat," Michael
Yitzhaki told Israeli army radio. "I looked to the rear and I
automatically got out of the bus and quick. The bus went up in flames
in seconds. There were explosions non-stop and the flare-up was so fast
that I couldn't understand how.
“It
looks like the fuel tank was hit first. The flames ate up the bus with
amazing speed, and with the ammunition [of soldiers on board] going off
as well, we didn't manage to get back inside to save anyone."
"One
soldier in the back of the bus jumped from the window. Two people, I
don't know if they were alive or not, their bodies burnt up in the
fire," Ingrid Aharoni said, according to the British daily
newspaper, the Independent.
Palestinian
resistance group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the
retaliatory attack. "Al-Quds Brigades claims the martyrdom
operation, in retaliation for the assassination of its leader Fathi
Shaqaqi by the Zionists seven years ago and the killing of Palestinian
civilians in Gaza, Rafah, Nablus and elsewhere on our occupied
lands."
On
Thursday, October 17, Israeli tanks killed eight Palestinians,
including two children, when they blasted two houses in the southern
Gaza Strip town of Rafah with shells and heavy machinegun fire.
The
murdered children were a four-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy. Among
the killed were also two young men and two elderly women – all
civilians.
Separately,
the Palestinian Authority (PA) called "immediately for resuming
without conditions the peace process as this is the only way to break
the circle of violence and bloodshed."
U.N.
Secretary General Kofi Annan
said Monday he was "appalled" by the car bomb attack.
In
a statement released by his spokesman, Annan,
who was on a trip to Asia, said he "once again calls on all
Palestinian groups to stop immediately all such acts of violence."
The
U.N. chief released no such statement following the murder October 17 of
eight Palestinian civilians, including two children.
Meanwhile,
the Israeli occupation army continued its policy of demolishing
Palestinian homes, with the homes of two teenage Palestinian activists
in a refugee camp near the West Bank city of Nablus being flattened
overnight, witnesses and Israel radio said Tuesday, according to Agence
France-Presse (AFP).
Witnesses
said Israeli forces blew up the house of the family of Ibrahim Yasser
Naji, 19, one of the authors of a retaliatory double attack in Tel Aviv
in July which killed four people and wounded some 40.
Israeli
public radio said the army also destroyed the family home of another
teenage activist, Mohammad Ismail Attallah, 18.
The
destruction of the homes of Palestinian activists’ families – which
is aimed at intimidating other resistance activists – has been
denounced by human rights groups as collective punishment.
Also
overnight, military sources said two Palestinian resistance activists
were abducted by the Israeli army in Ramallah and Bethlehem
respectively.
