Suicide Bombers Strike in Heart of Jerusalem; 12 Die

On a night when downtown Jerusalem teems with young people, two Palestinians strode past a row of packed cafes late Saturday, then blew themselves up moments and yards apart. At least 12 people were killed, including the suicide bombers, and more than 170 wounded, police said.

A car bomb exploded about 20 minutes later less than a block away as emergency crews attempted to rescue victims from the initial blasts. People fled in panic as dozens of ambulances careened through downtown streets.

Badly mangled bodies were strewn in Zion Square, site of one explosion, and on the pavement outside the Rimon Cafe just off Ben Yehuda Street, where the other suicide bomber struck.

Ben Yehuda is a pedestrian mall popular with tourists, off-duty Israeli soldiers and young people, religious and secular, especially on Saturday night after the Jewish Sabbath ends. Jewish youths converge along Ben Yehuda and at the end of the mall, in Zion Square, to chat, play music and patronize the bars and small restaurants.

Among the many wounded who flooded area hospitals, 11 were listed in critical condition. The majority of the casualties were Israelis in their teens or 20s, police said.

In a separate attack early today, armed Palestinians infiltrated a civilian shooting range in the Gaza Strip and killed an Israeli, the Israeli military said.

The Palestinians took up positions at the shooting range and continued firing, according to the military. The attack took place near two Israeli settlements in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, nine hours after the suicide bombings.

The three explosions in the heart of Jewish Jerusalem represented an especially devastating act of violence in 14 bloody months of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They came as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was in the United States preparing for a meeting with President Bush and as a new U.S. envoy was in the region attempting to mediate a cease-fire.

The attacks were “unprecedented . . . [among] the worst we have ever seen,” Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said.

Blood was splattered at least three blocks up Ben Yehuda Street. It pooled in front of the Burger King and near a souvenir store. Glass shards and metal bits--the bombs were apparently packed with nails--were scattered everywhere.

Dazed and bloodied victims were led away in droves. Many victims had lost limbs. Others cried into their cellular phones, alerting their families or attempting to find friends scattered in the pandemonium.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Israel put the blame on Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. The Palestinian leader condemned the attacks but found himself under intense pressure, including from U.S. mediators, to rein in militants. The radical Islamic Jihad group has claimed responsibility for many recent suicide bombings, but other groups have also perpetrated such acts. The Hamas organization vowed last month to avenge the killing by Israel of one of its top commanders.

Avi, a 15-year-old Israeli boy who did not give his last name, was emerging from an ice cream parlor on Ben Yehuda when the twin blasts stopped him in his tracks.

“I saw people flying in the air,” he said, sobbing as he recounted the nightmare to two reporters. “There were two explosions--one beside me that didn’t kill many people and one farther away [in Zion Square] where there were a lot of dead people.”

Michel Haroush, a tourist who had arrived in Jerusalem from France a day earlier, said the blasts knocked him to the ground.

“I fell down, and next thing I saw was half a human body lying by my foot,” he said. “I’ve never seen half a human body.”

Sharon, whose meeting with Bush was scheduled for Monday, announced through a spokesman that he was cutting his trip short. The White House said the Bush meeting would be moved up to today.

Bush said in a statement that he was “horrified and saddened” by the attacks and demanded that Arafat arrest those responsible for “these hideous murders.” In unusually tough language, Bush said Arafat had to “demonstrate through actions and not merely words” his determination to fight terrorism.

An aide to Sharon, Avi Pazner, said Israel would retaliate for the bloodshed and dismissed as meaningless Arafat’s condemnation.

The Palestinian Authority issued a statement condemning the attacks, expressing “deep anger and pain” and accusing those responsible of attempting to sabotage fledgling peace efforts by the new U.S. envoy, retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni.

“We have been trying our best to sustain a cease-fire,” Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said on CNN. “But we all know violence breeds violence, assassinations breed assassinations, bullets breed bullets.”

Arafat’s security services were reported to have detained a top Islamic Jihad leader in Gaza City earlier Saturday after an hourlong gun battle in a rare show of internal Palestinian violence.

But Israel maintains that Arafat has barely lifted a finger to crackdown on extremists.

Saturday’s attacks were the first suicide bombings in Jerusalem since an Aug. 9 explosion at a pizzeria killed 16 people. They were the first double suicide bombing in years. But they were the third terrorist attack by Palestinians inside Israel in five days.

It was not immediately clear what form Israeli retaliation would take. Earlier Saturday, Israeli forces invaded the Palestinian-ruled West Bank city of Jenin and surrounded two others, Nablus and Tulkarm, in response to a bomb explosion on a bus in northern Israel that killed three Israelis plus the Palestinian assailant. Two Palestinians, including an 11-year-old, were killed by Israeli fire in Saturday’s incursion into Jenin.

Zinni, the American envoy, telephoned Arafat on Saturday night to urge that he take action and said in a statement that the Palestinians must “act in a comprehensive and sustained manner to root out terrorists and bring them to justice.”

Early today, Israeli forces arrested several militants on the outskirts of East Jerusalem in the Jewish section of the city, Palestinian witnesses said. Israeli officials had no immediate comment.

The death toll from Saturday’s carnage was expected to rise. While the suicide bombers blew themselves up in the open-air mall, the car bomb went off on a narrow side street about half a block from Zion Square. It shot a huge ball of flame into the sky and shattered car windows in the vicinity.

Nir Ladani was celebrating his 20th birthday with friends on Ben Yehuda when he saw the flames.

“I heard a boom, and then the smells of the bomb went up my nose,” Ladani, who was slightly wounded, told reporters. “I ran. I’d like to think I’m the worst injured, but I know it isn’t so.”

Another man out for a good time, who gave his name as David, said he was walking down Jaffa Street, near Ben Yehuda, when he heard the blast.

“I started seeing the people running, people running without arms and without legs,” he said.

Another witness, Yossi Mizrahi, told the Reuters news agency: “I saw people without arms. I saw a person with their stomach hanging open. I saw a 10-year-old-boy breathe his last breath. I can’t believe anybody would do anything like this.”

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Times staff writer James Gerstenzang in Washington contributed to this report.