3 Americans Die in Bomb Attack in Gaza

A large roadside bomb exploded beneath an American diplomatic convoy in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, killing three security officers in the first deadly attack on a U.S. target since the Palestinian uprising began three years ago.

The blast upended and nearly sliced an armored Chevrolet Suburban in half, spraying vehicle and body parts and gouging a large crater in the road barely a mile from the checkpoint where the convoy had entered Gaza from Israel. One person in the vehicle was wounded but survived. The passengers of two other U.S. vehicles escaped unharmed.

The three security officers who died, all of them Americans, were escorting cultural attaches sent to interview Palestinian academics who had applied for Fulbright scholarships to study or teach in the United States.

The attack raised the possibility of harsh U.S. and Israeli reprisals, although determining exactly whom to punish could prove difficult. All of the major Palestinian armed factions, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, denied involvement. These groups have not targeted Americans in the past.

Still, there was an immediate sense that a new line had been crossed in the Palestinian intifada, pushing it into a wider arena in which American lives may now be in danger because of Washington’s unwavering support for Israel.

“It’s definitely a watershed event,” said Shmuel Bar, an Israeli intelligence veteran and expert in radical Islam. “You have to feel they were targeted. You don’t mistake them for Israelis.”

After the bombing, the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv urged all American citizens to leave Gaza, a stronghold of Islamic extremist groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Acting on a request from Palestinian leaders, the FBI dispatched a team of agents from Washington to help with the investigation.

Israeli terrorism experts described the attack as well organized, possibly based on inside knowledge of when the Americans would be driving into Gaza in their fortified cars. Such delegations are frequent visitors here, and diplomatic license plates and the make of car mean they are instantly recognizable.

Without a claim of responsibility, it was impossible to say for certain whether the convoy was hit purely because it was American.

Anger on the Palestinian street ebbs and flows, but it has increased in recent days over an ongoing Israeli military incursion into southern Gaza in search of tunnels Israel says are used to smuggle in weapons from Egypt. Eight Palestinians have been killed and dozens of homes demolished in the operation, and the U.S. has defended it as a legitimate act of Israeli self-defense.

The U.S. veto this week of a United Nations resolution criticizing a security barrier Israel is building along -- and often inside -- the West Bank has also enraged many Palestinians.

“There has always been frustration and deep suspicion that American foreign policy couldn’t get out from beneath Israel’s thumb,” said Michael Tarazi, a legal advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is headed by Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. “That frustration has manifested itself in an attack.”

The dead and injured were private security guards from a Virginia-based company employed by the U.S. Embassy to protect its diplomats on visits to Gaza.

The blast occurred about 10:15 a.m. at an intersection just inside the north border of the Gaza Strip, along the dust-choked ribbon of road that runs from the Erez crossing from Israel into the heart of Gaza City.

The convoy was led by a Palestinian police car.

“I heard the sound of the explosion, so we went out and we thought the Israelis were coming,” said Ibrahim Abu Sila, a local teenager. “I saw dense smoke. We went there and found Palestinian security cars arriving and bodies scattered all over the place.”

The force of the explosion flipped one armored vehicle over, ripping through its underside. It lay next to a smoking crater 10 feet across and several feet deep, out of which a length of gray wire ran somewhere off to the side of the road, suggesting a remote-controlled bomb.

“It was blown up from a distance,” said Abu Amal Algoul, the local commander of one of the elite Palestinian security agencies. “Of course [the Americans] were targeted. He was waiting for them, or he had information that they were arriving. But up till now we don’t know who he is.”

The lone survivor from the mangled vehicle staggered out and was taken to the nearest hospital. Riyad Adassi, a nurse, said the man had been sitting in the back of the vehicle and had suffered a leg injury and showed signs of internal bleeding. He was evacuated later to an Israeli hospital.

The injured man and another victim, who was dead on arrival, both wore gun holsters around their waists, but the weapons had been removed -- it was not clear by whom -- before they arrived at the hospital, Adassi said.

Soon after the blast, Israeli tanks, backed by two attack helicopters, arrived at the site, an area Israel had occupied off and on up until a few months ago. A team of U.S. investigators arrived to photograph the scene, but hurried away a few minutes later after a crowd of young Palestinians began pelting them with stones.

A few hours after the attack, the area was still tense as a truck arrived to haul the gutted vehicle away. Youths hurled rocks at foreign reporters and also at Palestinian security personnel, hitting at least one officer.

U.S. officials identified the three dead men as John Branchizio, 37, of Texas; Mark T. Parsons, 31, of New York; and John Martin Linde Jr., 30, of Missouri. The man who survived was not identified. All four worked for DynCorp, a Reston, Va.- based subsidiary of Computer Sciences Corp. of El Segundo.

Condemnation of the bombing poured in from all sides -- the White House, Israeli officials and the flailing Palestinian Authority, which is struggling to form a new government to reverse the deepening sense of chaos in the Palestinian territories and misery under Israeli occupation.

“The explosion was against the peace process and against Palestinian national interests,” said Saeb Erekat, a senior negotiator close to Arafat.

In Washington, a statement by President Bush blamed Palestinian officials for failing to act against militant groups and singled out Arafat as the main obstacle to that effort.

“Palestinian authorities should have acted long ago to fight terror in all its forms,” Bush said. “There must be an empowered prime minister who controls all Palestinian security forces, reforms that continue to be blocked by Yasser Arafat.”

Palestinian officials, who appeared embarrassed and upset by the bombing, pledged full cooperation with the investigation.

But analysts cautioned against expecting too much help from Palestinian security forces, which are in disarray and may fear that going too aggressively after those responsible would risk igniting a civil war.

Their precarious position was highlighted late Wednesday when Palestinian police tried to arrest a member of the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine but met with gunfire and violent resistance from supporters of the group. Police announced the arrest of three members of the group and two from the Popular Resistance Committees, a small militant faction in the area where the bombing occurred. But police officials declined to say whether the arrests were directly connected to the attack.

Until now, the various Palestinian militias have trained their firepower almost exclusively on Israel, partly to avoid incurring American wrath.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer told reporters that the only previous incident was an attack on a U.S. car in Gaza at the end of June, in which no one was hurt, but he gave no further details.

“It’s not in the interests of the Palestinians. It’s counterproductive from every point of view,” said David Kimche, a former director of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. “They’ve hoped all along to gain the sympathy of the Americans.”

Instead, the Bush administration may toughen its stance, and the Israeli government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon may enjoy an even freer hand in its hard-line approach to the Palestinians.

The latest attack could also bolster Sharon’s argument that the U.S. and Israel are engaged in the same fight against terrorism.

“This will bring more enemies, and the Palestinians are already up to their necks with one enemy,” said Mahdi Abdul Hadi, head of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs. “This might be political suicide for the Palestinians, and they can’t afford it.”

Like the other main armed factions, Hamas quickly disavowed the bombing.

“The Palestinian resistance realizes completely that its first enemy is who occupies the land and who kills the sons of our people -- the Zionist entity,” Adnan Asfour, a Hamas spokesman in the West Bank city of Nablus, was quoted as saying on a pro-Hamas Web site. “Therefore, all our resistance force is directed to destroying this enemy.”

Speculation swirled around offshoots of the major groups, or possibly a rogue cell acting on the advice or with the support of outside foes of Israel, such as the Iranian government.

Analysts noted that the attack came on the heels of last week’s bombing of an alleged terrorist training camp in Syria by Israeli warplanes. Israel said the raid was in retaliation for a deadly Palestinian suicide attack in northern Israel. Militants who viewed the aerial assault as an Israeli move to widen the conflict may have felt spurred to open a new front of their own.

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Chu reported from Beit Lahiya and Stack from Jerusalem. Special correspondent Fayed Abu Shammalah in Beit Lahiya and Times staff writer Josh Meyer in Washington contributed to this report.