Haifa: 16 die in suicide blast

2003-03-05 18:34

Haifa - At least 16 people were killed and around 30 wounded Wednesday when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a bus in the northern Israeli town of Haifa, the first bombing in the Jewish state in exactly two months.

Most of the victims were thought to be students as the bus travelled between a residential area on the Carmel heights and Haifa university, public television said.

Ten of the wounded were said to be in serious condition.

The suicide bomber was wearing a belt packed with several dozen kilos of explosives and nails to cause maximum carnage.

Hardline Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad said the blast, which created chaos and carnage in the city, was revenge for a string of bloody raids by the Israeli army into the Gaza Strip in recent weeks.

It was the first bomb attack inside Israel since January 5, when two Palestinian suicide bombers blew themselves up in central Tel Aviv, killing 23 other people. That attack was claimed by an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction.

"The explosion occurred inside the bus, and was very powerful. There's almost nothing left of the bus," fire brigade officer Gershon Zoberman said.

"The scenes are horrific here, twisted metal, it is very difficult to look at," one eye-witness told public radio.

'Very grave attack'

"The centre of the bus lifted up into the air, the roof was torn off. It looked like a blast inside the bus, and within seconds people began taking the wounded out," another witness told Channel Two private television.

Police and ambulance services rushed to the scene as the area was cordoned off by security forces in case there were further explosives in the area.

Government spokesperson Avi Pazner called the deadly blast a "very grave attack" and said Israel would take "vigorous action against the terrorist organisations".

He said Israeli intelligence had been dealing with at least 40 tip-offs of impending attacks when the Haifa bus was blown up.

The attack came just two days after Israeli forces staged a bloody raid into a refugee camp in central Gaza targeting a founder member of the radical Islamic group Hamas, which has spearheaded suicide bombings against the Jewish state whose right to exist it refuses to recognise.

Hamas vowed to continue its attacks, while the Palestinian Authority accused Israel of trying to disrupt top-level Palestinian meetings to discuss reforms of Arafat's administration.

Eight people, including a pregnant woman and a 13-year-old child were killed in Monday's Gaza raid, provoking international calls for Israeli restraint.

No Palestinian faction laid immediate claim to Wednesday's bombing, but senior officials from the leading Islamic groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, said the grisly strike was revenge for Israel's killing of civilians in Gaza.

Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, a senior Hamas leader, said the attack "is a response to the Jewish terror that yesterday killed an 85-year-old man and the day before that a pregnant woman."

Israeli troops on Tuesday shot dead an elderly Palestinian shepherd outside a Jewish settlement on the edge of Gaza City.

Peace roadmap "We will not raise the white flag in front of the Zionist terror and we will fight them as long as there is occupation," he said.

Islamic Jihad's Muhammed al-Hindi also said that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's get-tough policy in Gaza was to blame for the latest attack.

"The policy of Sharon is responsible for the terror in the area. Zionist incursions targeting Palestinian civilians are responsible for all this violence, and the blood will flow as long the violence and terror continue.

"Our people will fight, whoever carried this operation," he said.

The Tel Aviv double suicide bombing in January was claimed by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Arafat's Fatah movement.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said the bombing and the "cycle of violence requires immediate international intervention and the implementation of the peace roadmap."

The so-called roadmap, drawn up but still not finalised by the diplomatic quartet of the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States, calls for the staged creation of a Palestinian state with independence by 2005.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has accepted the plan in principle but wants tough guarantees to make sure the Palestinians comply with demands to disarm and break up terror groups behind suicide bombings. - Sapa-AFP

- SAPA