MIDDLE EAST: TWENTY PEOPLE KILLED AFTER A PALESTINIAN SUICIDE BOMBER BLOWS A BUS APART PACKED WITH ORTHODOX JEWS IN JERUSALEM.

Record ID: 646058

  • Title: MIDDLE EAST: TWENTY PEOPLE KILLED AFTER A PALESTINIAN SUICIDE BOMBER BLOWS A BUS APART PACKED WITH ORTHODOX JEWS IN JERUSALEM.
  • Date: 19th August 2003
  • Summary: VARIOUS: OF EMERGENCY WORKERS AT SCENE, WRAPPING UP AND MOVING BODY PARTS. (2 SHOTS) MV: BAGS WITH BODY PARTS.
  • Embargoed: 3rd September 2003 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: RAMALLAH, UNKNOWN LOCATION, GAZA STRIP, WEST BANK AND JERUSALEM
  • City:
  • Country: Palestinian Territories
  • Topics: Crime,General,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA479B3O1DGCSF09VIG3X20AP08
  • Story Text: Palestinian suicide bomber kills 20 on Israeli bus.
    A Palestinian suicide bombing blew apart a bus packed with ultra-Orthodox Jews returning from a holy shrine in Jerusalem on Tuesday (August 19). The blast killed at least 20 people, including children.
    The attack, the first bus bombing in Jerusalem since 17 people were killed on June 11, shattered a sense of security that had begun to take root in the city during a seven-week-old ceasefire declared by Palestinian militant groups.
    The militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements both said they were behind the blast, which also wounded about 80 people and further frayed a U.S.-backed peace plan that is dependent on the ceasefire holding.
    Body bags piled up so fast that emergency workers could barely keep from stacking them one on top of the other.
    All around, the carnage left by the blast littered the pavement -- severed arms, legs, a lower torso and bits of flesh and bone. The stench of burnt flesh hung in the air.
    As mangled bodies were pulled one after another from the shattered double-length bus, workers rushed to sheath them in white plastic. The smaller bundles held the corpses of children, some of them babies in nappies.
    A videotape released by the militant Islamic group Hamas, which claimed responsibility for the bombing, showed a 29-year-old holding an assault rifle in one hand and a Koran in the other. He named himself as Raed Abdel-Hamid Mask and said he would carry out the suicide bombing to avenge Israel's killing of one of the group's members.
    Referring to Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, he said,
    "Israeli people should change him and finish what happened to (assassinated former prime minister Yitzhak) Rabin. What happened to Rabin will happen to him later."
    The bomber was believed to have disguised himself in the black garb of ultra-religious Jews before making his way onto the bus in the ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood of Beit Yisra'el.
    It lies near the line known as "The Seam" which divides mainly Jewish West Jerusalem and the predominantly Arab eastern part of the holy city.
    His victims had been on their way back from nightly worship at the ancient Western Wall, one of Judaism's holiest sites, in Jerusalem's Old City.
    His explosive load was packed with metal pellets and shards for maximum death and destruction. Blood spattered the pavement in front of a synagogue and a kindergarten.
    Islamic Jihad said in a statement to Lebanon's al-Manar television that it carried out the attack, but Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip declined to confirm the report.
    The explosion struck another heavy blow to the three-month truce declared on June 29 by Islamic militants spearheading a nearly three-year-old Palestinian uprising for an independent state.
    The ceasefire is widely considered crucial to a U.S.-backed "road map" to peace which outlines reciprocal steps to end the violence and establish a Palestinian state by 2005.
    Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Mazen condemned the blast, saying it "does not serve the interests of the Palestinian people". He promised to launch an investigation. The United States also condemned the blast and demanded a Palestinian crackdown on militant groups.
    Mazen, whose peacemaking efforts are supported by Washington, has said a crackdown would risk a civil war.
    Senior Hamas Official, Abdel Aziz Al Rantissi said, "I can't say that ceasefire is finished. But we are still committed to ceasefire as Palestinian organisations, national and Islamic, but all Palestinian organisations said clearly we will react for each aggression from the side of Israelis, we react for each terror action."
    Senior Israeli Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Gideon Meir, said the bomb followed a Palestinian pattern, " Whenever Israel is making gestures to the Palestinians, the response which we are getting is terror, more terror and more terror," he said.
    "This must stop. And the Palestinians must take their act together."
    The clean-up of the bomb site, continued throughout the night.
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