Yagur | Wednesday
THE front of bus 960, blown up by a Palestinian suicide bomber in the Wednesday morning rush hour on the edge of Israel’s port city of Haifa, was ripped wide open, leaving a horrific scene of gore and the debris of eight abruptly terminated lives.
As a police van pulled away the dismembered vehicle, blood, bodies and personal belongings — cell phones, a deck of cards and food — were left scattered on the hot asphalt of Route 70.
Religious volunteers, tasked with gathering all body parts for burial, carefully picked up remains off the road, as the smell of blood and charred flesh, exacerbated by a burning sun, hung heavy over the scene.
Two hundred meters (yards) from the spot where the bus exploded, more human debris, plastic bags and lunch boxes littered the road, attesting to the power of the blast.
”I saw bodies everywhere, I didn’t know who was still alive or dead,” said policeman Shai Attias, his right hand shaking, explaining he arrived at the scene around 20 minutes after the blast.
”There was this woman soldier trapped inside the bus, she was crying for help and by the time rescue teams reached her, she was dead,” he said, his head bowed.
”I know the only solution is a peace deal with the Palestinians, but look, they’re just not ready yet. I hope (US Secretary of State Colin) Powell’s mission will be successful but after this, I think it will be difficult to restore calm,” he added.
Powell is due in Israel late on Thursday to try to tackle the unprecedented wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence. The Jewish state called the Yagur bombing a Palestinian ”welcome” for him.
The armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic group Hamas, the Ezzeddin al-Qassam Brigades, claimed responsibility for the blast that killed eight passengers as well as the bomber and wounded around 20.
As police lifted a three-hour cordon on the highway and started allowing cars to pass, several people driving past the scene made a conscious effort to look away.
A young woman put her hands on each side of her face while another man stepped out of a car, choking and gagging until he reached the roadside and vomitted.
Israeli Arab journalist Said Hassanein from Haifa, who arrived early at the scene, said that ”no one but journalists, police and medics were allowed close to the bus. People were watching in silence, no one dared to make any political comment.”
Wednesday’s deadly suicide bombing was the first Palestinian attack inside Israel in 10 days, and came amid a vast Israeli military offensive launched almost two weeks ago on the West Bank.
But policemen at the scene refused to say whether the attack was linked to the army’s withdrawal from two northern West Bank cities on the border with Israel a day before.
”Everybody is going to be scared again of suicide attacks, (Israeli) Arabs and Jews alike,” said Hassanein, recalling the easier coexistence between the two peoples in Haifa before the Palestinian uprising started 18 months ago.
”Arabs inside Israel are increasingly finding themselves in an uncomfortable position.
”On the one hand they feel for their Palestinian brothers inside the territories and on the other hand, they too are victims of Palestinian suicide attacks,” he said.
”This bus was heading to Jerusalem from Haifa and it is very possible that some Israeli Arabs were riding it too,” he said, pointing out that an Arab was among the 15 Israelis killed in a suicide bombing in Haifa on March 31.
Meanwhile, a meeting which US Secretary of State Colin Powell plans with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would be a ”tragic mistake”, an Israeli official said Wednesday, while adding that Israel would not prevent it.
The aide to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said this was Sharon’s personal view, adding that ”any visit by a foreign leader to Yasser Arafat which breaks his isolation is an encouragement to terrorism and enables him to continue with his double-speak.”
The official, who declined to be identified, called the suicide bus bombing in Haifa ”Arafat’s welcome present to Powell.”
Powell, who is expected in Jerusalem Thursday, said in Cairo Tuesday he intended to meet Arafat, who has been penned up in his Ramallah headquarters by Israeli troops since they launched a massive offensive in the West Bank on March 29.
In other news, the slaying of 13 Israeli soldiers has further damaged hopes for a US-brokered ceasefire as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed to fight for the survival of the Jewish people.
Sharon vowed on Tuesday that Israel would fight the Palestinians to the finish after the soldiers were killed in an epic battle at a West Bank refugee camp.
Facing Israel’s biggest one-day army loss since the Palestinian uprising erupted 18 months ago, the former general defied US calls to pull back his troops and said they would keep up their West Bank assault.
”This battle is a battle for the survival of the Jewish people and the state of Israel,” public radio quoted Sharon as saying.
The dramatic events darkened hopes for the peace mission of US Secretary of State Colin Powell, on the second day of a tour aimed at keeping the conflict from erupting into a regional war.
”We believe that the effect of the incursions throughout the Arab world and throughout the rest of the world is very negative with respect to Israel’s long-term interests,” Powell said in Egypt.
”Israel must be allowed to have peace. The Palestinian people must be allowed to have peace in their own state called Palestine,” he said after talks with President Hosni Mubarak.
Powell later told reporters accompanying him to Madrid, where he is to meet top EU officials and UN chief Kofi Annan as well as European and Russian officials, that he had not set a date to end his mission.
He said he was prepared to stay in the region for ”some while” after earlier saying he intended to meet besieged Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Sharon, meanwhile, has seen his popularity ratings soar since launching the assault on the West Bank on March 29, and insisted there could be no let-up in what he calls a campaign to dismantle Palestinian terror networks.
”The fight against terrorist organisations will go on until their infrastructures are destroyed,” said Sharon.
An army representative said the 13 Israeli soldiers fell victim to a coordinated ambush by Palestinian fighters, including a suicide bomber, in Jenin refugee camp, where militants have mounted a fierce resistance to the Israeli onslaught of tanks, troops and aerial bombing.
General Ron Kitrey said two groups of Israeli soldiers were walking on separate streets in the narrow alleyways of the Jenin camp when one of them wandered into an area booby-trapped with explosive charges.
The other group was hit in a ”simultaneous attack” with gunfire from several directions.
At the same time, Kitrey said, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up, most likely near the first group.
Seven soldiers were also wounded, at least one seriously, the army said.
In another blow, an Israeli parachute commander was killed by ”friendly fire” in Nablus, the army said.
The Palestinian leadership said Israel bore ”full responsibility” for the escalation in the conflict and accused it of ”barbaric murders.”
Israeli tanks and troops earlier withdrew from the towns of Qalqilya and Tulkarem but strengthened a blockade around them and poured into the village of Dura, where at least three Palestinians were killed.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who will meet Powell in Spain, said: ”The Israeli military operation must be halted not in stages, not town by town. It must stop and stop immediately.”
Sharon has not said when he will call off the blitz. But he said Monday his troops would later create buffer zones to protect Israel from Palestinian militants.
Witnesses in Nablus, where there has also been strong Palestinian resistance, said Israeli F-16 warplanes fired four missiles on a pocket of militants. The army has claimed it controls the town.
The Jenin deaths shocked a military that prides itself on minimal casualties. The army had acknowledged only 13 dead since the beginning of the campaign, which it says has killed around 200 Palestinians and arrested more than 1 000.
”This is a difficult day,” Sharon told the nation, already in sombre mood on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
More than 1 800 people have been killed, the overwhelming majority of them Palestinians, since the uprising began. Amid the violence, US President George W.Bush has been trying to map out Washington’s Middle East strategy, which he warns could include an attack on Iraq.
He has been pressing the Arab world to use its influence to rein in Islamic militants and especially to have Arafat halt anti-Israel terror attacks.
Arab and Islamic nations have reacted furiously to Israel’s assault. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein cut off all Iraqi oil exports for a month.
In Jordan, one of only three Arab countries to have relations with Israel, King Abdullah II warned those ties were at stake.
Islamic countries urged the UN Security Council on Tuesday to use sanctions to force Israel to end the siege.
Protesters have taken to the streets across the world in recent days. A student was killed in Alexandria, Egypt, in clashes with police at a rally on Tuesday against Powell’s visit, hospital sources said.
Israeli forces remain in place in many villages and several major West Bank towns.
In Bethlehem, a standoff between Israeli troops and around 200 Palestinian gunmen holed up in the Church of the Nativity, one of Christianity’s holiest sites, went into a second week.
Lebanese police said Hezbollah fighters bombarded Israeli posts in the disputed Shebaa Farms border region, sparking Israeli strikes.
In another sign of his determination, Sharon scrapped his so-called kitchen cabinet, made up of himself, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer, officials said.
He replaced it with a council of party leaders. The move effectively sidelines the peace-minded Peres. – Sapa-AFP