Toll Mounts as Bomber Kills 15 on Israeli Bus

In the third such attack in 12 hours, a Palestinian suicide bomber struck Israel on Sunday, blowing up a passenger bus and killing 15 people. Israel warned that Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat faces the annihilation of his administration if the bloodshed does not stop.

Fearing fierce retaliation, Arafat declared a state of emergency and was reported to have made dozens of arrests, while Israel tightened a blockade on all Palestinian towns after the spate of suicide attacks left 25 Israelis dead and about 220 injured in less than one day’s time.

The military wing of the radical Islamic movement Hamas claimed responsibility for Sunday’s bus blast in the northern port city of Haifa, as well as a double suicide bombing in the heart of Jewish Jerusalem on Saturday night. But Israel blamed Arafat, who is being told he has a last chance to crack down on extremists.

Many Israelis demanded Arafat’s expulsion or the destruction of his Palestinian Authority, and a few of their political leaders appeared willing to oblige. The attacks came as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met with U.S. officials in New York and Washington, and as American special envoy Anthony C. Zinni attempted to broker a cease-fire. On Sunday, as Zinni laid a wreath at a bomb site in Jerusalem, he was booed by angry Israelis who chanted, “Zinni, go home!”

The Israeli government’s security Cabinet was meeting Sunday to plan retaliation for Saturday’s Jerusalem bombings when word arrived of the attack in Haifa, on the Mediterranean coast 50 miles north of Tel Aviv.

In Haifa, a rare mixed city where Jews and Arabs live together in relative harmony, bus No. 16 was making its regular cross-town run, full of students, retirees and residents going to work.

A cleanshaven Palestinian--later identified as a 21-year-old plumber from the West Bank city of Nablus--boarded the bus and paid the driver with a 5-shekel coin but didn’t wait for his change. Within seconds, he detonated the nail-studded bomb strapped to his waist.

“I called him to take the change, but I didn’t know whether he understood me,” the bus driver, Shimon Kabesa, said in an interview from his bed in Haifa’s Ramban hospital. Kabesa, who suffered shrapnel wounds to his back, face and one hand, said the Palestinian raised his suspicions.

“I saw something right away in his face,” he said. “When I called to him, he knew I was on to him.”

Kabesa, 47, lay in the hospital’s postoperative recovery room. His face was bruised and speckled with blood. His eyebrows and hair were singed. His ears were stitched and his head bandaged.

‘There Were Pieces of Bodies Everywhere’

Shimon Suissa, an ambulance driver who helped remove four of the dead from the bus, still appeared shaken hours later.

“We’ve been in these situations and never seen anything like this,” Suissa, 30, said. “There were pieces of bodies everywhere, on the roof of the bus, on the ground.”

The force of the blast ripped back the roof of the bus and crumpled it like a piece of paper. The vehicle jumped with the explosion, then fell back to the ground and rolled a block or two downhill, slamming into cars and finally crashing into a utility pole.

Bodies and body parts flew through the air and landed scattered on the pavement. Police sappers inspected the wrecked vehicle for more explosives.

“I saw people running to help,” witness Rachel Antebi said. “Jews, Arabs were standing together crying, helping.” One Israeli Arab, who gave only his first name, Faisal, pulled two girls from the wreckage and kept vigil in the hospital waiting room, his hands still covered in blood, until learning that both had died.

Fifteen Israelis, plus the bomber, were killed and about 40 people were wounded--28 of them still hospitalized Sunday night. The Jerusalem blasts claimed 10 Israeli lives. A shooting in the Gaza Strip raised the Israeli toll to 26.

Sixteen-year-old Sergei Zvezdin, who had skipped school Sunday and was taking bus No. 16 to get a haircut, lay in another Ramban hospital bed after getting sutured. A metal nut spewed from the bomb had punctured his face, just to the side of his left nostril, and lodged itself in the sinus.

The teenager, his wide face scratched, bruised and bandaged under a head of thick blond hair, said he couldn’t remember everything that happened. He heard a huge boom, then jumped out the shattered back window. He had moved to Israel with his mother three years ago from Russia, where his father remains.

Many Believed Haifa Was Immune to Attack

Many residents of Haifa had thought themselves immune to Palestinian terrorism. With a large Arab population, the city has not suffered the major attacks of other Israeli cities. But that may be ending.

“Haifa is an example of coexistence,” said Dr. Zvi Ben Yishai, deputy director of Ramban hospital, who was busy overseeing the arrival of bomb victims. “Nevertheless, we live in Israel, and in Israel such an attack could happen anywhere.”

Camille Faran, an Israeli Arab businessman who divides his time between Jerusalem and Haifa, said the diversity of Haifa, with Arab Muslims, Arab Christians and Jews, had worked.

“Haifa is different from other parts of the country,” he said Sunday. “But now, everyone is living in fear.”

The sudden carnage placed Arafat in one of the most difficult positions of his long, volatile career. He risks civil war if he jails and attempts to disarm Islamic radicals; he risks all-out war with Israel if he does not. Though he has been in this position before, the demands that he finally act decisively have never been louder than they are now.

“This is the turning point,” said Israeli Culture Minister Matan Vilnai, of the center-left Labor Party. “The Palestinians did not take the appropriate steps when given the opportunity. It will result in the endangering of the entire existence of the Palestinian Authority.”

Huddled in an emergency session with his Cabinet and security chiefs in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Arafat issued a strongly worded condemnation of the bombings and imposed what Palestinian officials called martial law. But nothing short of Arafat launching a full-scale war on Islamic militants seemed likely to satisfy the Israeli government and an outraged public.

Arrests Reported in Palestinian Areas

Palestinian Minister of Planning and Regional Cooperation Nabil Shaath said the emergency rule measures would allow the Palestinian Authority to suspend constitutional rights and more easily arrest suspects. But the authority has never before been too concerned with constitutional niceties and in fact usually acts as it sees fit, so it was unclear what effect the measures would have.

Palestinian security sources said about 50 members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad were arrested in three West Bank cities Sunday. The Arabic satellite television station Al Jazeera was invited on some of the raids. Masked Palestinian security forces could be seen rounding up Islamic radicals.

“All those who today and yesterday tried to undermine our interests will be caught and brought to trial,” said the Palestinian security chief in the West Bank, Col. Jibril Rajoub.

There can “only be one Palestinian Authority,” he said.

He noted, however, that his forces might have trouble carrying out a crackdown because the Israeli army barred all Palestinian traffic outside Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank, a move that in effect prevents movement between Palestinian towns and villages.

“I think that the Israeli government will understand that closure, blockades and assassinations have not led to a solution,” Rajoub said. Israel’s recent “assassination of [Hamas military leader] Mahmoud Abu Hanoud was unnecessary, [and] it was an official invitation of yesterday’s and today’s lunatics’ reaction.”

Four Palestinians Are Killed by Army

Among other measures, the Palestinian Authority said any groups that do not abide by its decision to enact a cease-fire would be outlawed. The public display of weapons, which are carried openly by thousands of Palestinian men in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, will be banned, and armed people will not be allowed to rally.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces raided Abu Dis, an Arab suburb of Jerusalem, early Sunday and arrested nine relatives of the two men suspected of being the suicide bombers in Jerusalem.

And near the West Bank city of Jenin, the army said troops shot and killed four armed Palestinians who approached them with the intention of carrying out an attack.

At Sunday’s Israeli Cabinet meeting, several right-wing ministers advocated toppling Arafat and returning to fuller occupation of Palestinian-ruled territory. At least two advocated expelling him to a foreign country.

“If the United States can fight a war 8,000 miles away, we should be able to fight a war against a regime so much closer,” said Education Minister Limor Livnat, of Sharon’s Likud Party. “It is not enough to kill this terrorist or that terrorist. We have to collapse the regime that gives power to terrorists.”

Even Shimon Peres, Israel’s dovish foreign minister, delivered a tough message to European diplomats in a session he called with them in Tel Aviv on Sunday night. According to a Foreign Ministry source, Peres urged ambassadors to convey to their governments that there must be a strong, unequivocal international effort to persuade Arafat to dismantle militant groups and armed militias and reassert his authority. Peres also “wanted to somehow prepare the world for unpleasant events that may occur in the next few days,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

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Wilkinson reported from Haifa and Curtius from Jerusalem.