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Jerusalem Rocked By Two Bomb Blasts
JERUSALEM, March 27 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A suspected bomber was killed and at least 27 people injured in two bomb attacks that occurred within six hours of each other in Jerusalem Tuesday, the opening day of an Arab summit in Jordan.
In the first attack, a car bomb slightly injured three people near a supermarket in the commercial and industrial area of Talpiot in southwest Jerusalem.
Police said that the second explosion, alongside a bus in the city's French Hill section, a Jewish neighborhood in a disputed area of east Jerusalem, was a fatal one, and that the dead person was the bomber himself, reports CNN.
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said the attacks appeared aimed at pressuring Israel during the summit, where the raging six-month tide of Israeli-Palestinian violence was at the top of the agenda.
"They will get nothing from us through force," he told public radio.
"This is apparently the use of force to make an impression on the summit and on us," said Peres, the leading dove in the right-wing-dominated government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
"The only way to make peace is by negotiation without the threat of violence, without bombing and shooting," he said. "I think this is a great error which really affects the peace process negatively," he added, according to CNN.
"We will not react to make an impression; we will react to prevent other acts like this. We will do everything so that the peace process is not halted."
Sharon called a meeting of cabinet ministers and security officials after the bombings, the latest in a string of attacks to rock Israel since the hardline former general was elected prime minister seven weeks ago.
The attacks occurred as several thousand Palestinians took to the streets to protest at the siege on the West Bank and Gaza Strip imposed since the Palestinian revolt erupted, leaving more than 440 people dead.
"It is another escalation in the wave of terrorist attacks," Jerusalem police chief Miki Levy told reporters, adding that nine people were wounded, one of them seriously. Israeli public television said 21 people had been injured.
"What is clear to us now from information we have gathered is that the explosion went off outside the bus, and we have the mangled body of the terrorist who had explosives on him."
A witness told army radio he saw at least two people lying on the ground after the explosion, which he said damaged the rear of the long articulated bus.
"What I see is a catastrophe," another witness told the radio as ambulance sirens wailed in the background.
Police closed off the area after the incident and launched a search for other explosive devices.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility of the bus attack, although the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad said it was behind the Talpiot car bomb, which occurred at around 7:40 am (0540 GMT)
A statement sent to AFP in Beirut said Islamic Jihad's "Jerusalem Brigades" were retaliating for "crimes committed by the Zionist enemy against our families in Hebron last night."
The bombings come at a time when tension has been running high after the killing of a 10-month-old Israeli child in Hebron in the West Bank on Monday and as a result the Israeli army closed off Hebron and imposed a curfew on Arab residents, BBC reports.
Overnight, Jewish settlers tried to move into Abu Sneinah, the apparent source of the shooting, provoking clashes with Palestinians before the army intervened. Settlers also set fire to Palestinian offices in Hebron in retaliation for the killing.
Islamic Jihad said it would "continue the struggle against the Zionist enemy," adding, "this heroic operation is not and will not be the last."
It was designed to show Sharon that "the determination of our people is stronger than the steel of his tanks, and that our hand is long and can reach the heart of the Zionist entity, despite security measures."
Meanwhile In Amman, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, speaking at the beginning of the Arab summit, said that Israel's "collective punishment" had fed Palestinian anger and despair and said peace talks should be resumed without delay, MSNBC reports.
In his toughest language yet on Israeli military and economic measures, the U.N. chief said the world had every right to criticize Israel for occupying Arab land and for its "excessively harsh response" to a Palestinian uprising, it adds.
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