Mourners Rout Peres at Israel Rites : Radical Muslims Claim Responsibility for Crash Killing 14

Far-right Israeli demonstrators, angry over the deaths of 14 people in a bus crash caused by a Palestinian steering the vehicle into a ravine, attacked Vice Premier Shimon Peres and clashed with police today. Later a radical Muslim group claimed responsibility for the crash.

Witnesses said enraged mourners attacked Peres, leader of the dovish Labor Party, at the city’s Sanhedria funeral parlor and security men rescued him with difficulty.

They said a rock hit the roof of Peres’ car as he arrived to represent the government at the funeral of a victim and mourners with clenched fists screamed “Peres the maniac” as he tried to offer condolences.

Bodyguards and police formed a human wedge around him as he tried to reason with the crowd, but he could not make himself heard and drove off.

The Islamic Jihad in Palestine, a radical fundamentalist group, said in a statement sent to an international news agency in Beirut that one of its members carried out “the heroic operation” Thursday by grabbing the steering wheel of the bus.

The statement warned Israeli authorities against endangering the life of the attacker or his family and added that Israel’s policies of “oppression and terrorism” would only produce more blood.

The 28-year-old unidentified Palestinian from the Nuseirat refugee camp in the occupied Gaza Strip, who yelled “Allahu Akbar” (God is Great) as he seized the steering wheel of an express bus on the busy Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway and sent it plunging down a cliff, was being interrogated in a Jerusalem hospital under heavy guard.

Police fired tear gas to disperse Jewish rioters who tried to lynch the Arab driver of a construction truck in Jerusalem. About 300 supporters of anti-Arab extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane, crying “Revenge” and “Death to the Arabs” charged mounted police.

Extreme-right protesters stoned Arab cars in Jerusalem and assaulted Jewish women holding a silent vigil against the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“Whores, you should have been in that burning bus,” a supporter of Rabbi Kahane spat at the women as rightists pelted them with rotten fruit and cartons.

Elsewhere in Israel, Arab cars and workers were stoned in the towns of Kiryat Gat, Kiryat Malachi and Beit Shemesh, police said. They arrested 10 rightists.

In Tunis, the Palestine Liberation Organization blamed Israeli hard-liners for provoking the deaths, a reaction which outraged even Israeli leftists who favor talks with the PLO.

Palestinian leaders in the occupied territories, including Bethlehem Mayor Elias Freij and Gaza lawyer Zuheir Reyyes, condemned the bus attack, saying it could only harm the Palestinian cause and peace prospects.