/ 29 January 2004

‘It’s a nightmare, you can smell the blood’

A suicide bomber blew up on a bus in Jerusalem on Thursday, killing at least 10 bystanders and wounding about 30 in an attack outside Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's official residence, police and paramedics said. The prime minister wasn't in the area.

A suicide bomber blew up on a bus in Jerusalem on Thursday, killing at least 10 bystanders and wounding about 30 in an attack outside Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s official residence, police and paramedics said. The prime minister wasn’t in the area.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The explosion coincided with a German-brokered prisoner swap between Israel and the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah. It was not clear whether there was a connection.

The explosion went off just before 9am in the Rehavia district in downtown Jerusalem, just 15 metres from Sharon’s official residence. Sharon was at his farm in southern Israel at the time, his aides said.

Eli Beer, a paramedic, said victims had been scattered over a wide area.

”There were a lot of heavy injuries, a lot of the people who were injured were in bad condition, a lot of people had missing limbs,” he said.

Bret Stephens, editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post, was near the scene at the time of the blast. ”There was glass everywhere, human remains everywhere, shoes, feet, pieces of guts. There were pieces of body everywhere,” he said.

Stephane Ben Shushan, who owns a chocolate store in the upscale neighborhood, said the bus was moving slowly in heavy traffic when the explosion went off. ”It’s a real nightmare, you can smell the blood,” he said.

The bomber was in the back of the bus when he detonated the explosives, said Jerusalem police chief Mickey Levy.

”It was a very serious attack on a bus packed with passengers,” Levy said at the scene. ”According to what we know at the moment … we’re talking about a suicide bomber.”

The green Egged bus was charred, with wires dangling everywhere. One side of the bus had been blown out and the back half of the roof was blown off.

Police investigators with sniffer dogs searched the bus. Paramedics were taking away the wounded on stretchers. Others were treated at the scene. People, dazed and crying, wandered around the area. One crying woman said she had been walking down the street when she heard a loud explosion.

The explosion came just two days after senior Egyptian officials made another attempt to win a pledge from Palestinian militants to halt attacks on Israelis.

The attack was a further setback to international efforts to bring about a resumption of peace talks. Two visiting senior United State state department officials, David Satterfield and John Wolf, were meeting with Israel’s defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, at the time of the blast.

The US-led ”road map” peace plan has been stalled almost since its inception in June.

Palestinian Authority officials condemned the bombing. ”This vicious cycle can only be broken by renewal of a meaningful peace process,” said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. ”Otherwise, violence will breed violence, bullets will breed bullets.”

Sharon’s spokesperson, Raanan Gissin, said the attack illustrated why Israel is building a contentious separation barrier in the West Bank.

Israel says the structure, which dips deep into the West Bank, is needed to keep suicide bombers out of Israel. But Palestinians have accused Israel of seizing their land. With Palestinian backing, a case challenging the legality of the barrier is to go

before the World Court in the Netherlands next month.

Gissin said Israel believes the court has no authority over the matter. ”No one has the right to question us and bring us to court on how to defend ourselves,” he said.

The last attack in Israel was a suicide bombing at a bus stop outside of Tel Aviv on December 25 that killed four people. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a radical member of the PLO, claimed responsibility for that attack.

Thursday’s bombing was the deadliest since a female suicide bomber killed 21 people at a seaside restaurant in Haifa on October 4. – Sapa-AP