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A
major explosive charge went off at the front of the bus
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OCCUPIED
JERUSALEM, November 21 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – One day
after the Israeli army killed 7 Palestinians, including 3 teenagers,
in the West Bank town of Tulkarem, a bus bomb blast in west Jerusalem
killed at least 11 people and injured 40 early Thursday, November 21.
Israeli
police said the blast was a “suicide bomb attack by a Palestinian
extremist” which happened as the bus was traveling through the
Kiryat Menacham sector of west Jerusalem. The blast caused fatalities
and dozens of injuries, said local police commander Miky Levy, Agence
France-Presse (AFP) reported.
“This
bombing of a bus in Jerusalem was carried out to kill and maim people.
There are constantly bomb alerts and we are questioning the
vehicle’s driver to try to determine how the bombing was carried
out,” said Levy.
Israeli
public radio reported that the blast was the result of a bomb attack
at around 7:15 a.m. (0515 GMT).
There
were dozens of victims of the bombing, at least 20 of whom were rushed
to a nearby hospital, the radio said. Some were said to be in grave
condition.
An
official with Maguen David Adom, the equivalent of the Red Cross,
said: “it was a major blast,” adding that women and children were
among the victims.
Ambulances
and police cars rushed to the scene.
Earlier
Tuesday night, November 19, the Israeli occupation army invaded the
West Bank town of Tulkarem, shooting dead 7 Palestinians, including 3
teenagers and a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades - an armed
offshoot of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah resistance
group, Palestinian sources said.
A
Palestinian man who was not known to have links with any resistance
faction was also killed in an unexplained blast which wrecked his
house in a village just north of Tulkarem.
Israeli
tanks shells wounded Wednesday two Palestinian children as they played
football in the Bureij refugee camp south of Gaza City, Palestinian
security officials said.
Although
an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman said Thursday’s attack in
Jerusalem precluded any discussion of the peace plan drawn up by the
international community to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict,
news agencies had reported earlier Wednesday that Israel asked the
United States to delay the release of the long-awaited roadmap until
after the Jewish state’s scheduled elections in January 2003.
A
senior official with the Islamic resistance group Hamas, Abdul Aziz
Rantissi said that attacks on Israelis such as the blast on Thursday
must go on.
“Such
operations must go on,” he said, without claiming any responsibility
for the suicide bombing which wrecked a packed bus in west Jerusalem
on Thursday morning.
“The
vast majority of the Palestinian people support such attacks,” he
added in a telephone interview from the Gaza Strip.
“Resistance
is the only path to liberation.”
