Jerusalem Suicide Bomber Injures 13

A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up early today outside a downtown Jerusalem hospital, wounding at least 13 people in the latest in a string of terror attacks targeting this holy city.

On Monday, four bombs exploded in Jerusalem--two at apartment buildings--and Israel responded with a missile strike on a Palestinian security building in the West Bank. A radical Palestinian group whose leader was assassinated by Israel last week claimed responsibility for those bombs.

Today’s rush-hour explosion killed the bomber, according to Police Chief Miki Levy, and injured at least 13 people, one of them critically. It happened on Haneviim Street, a busy thoroughfare of stores, restaurants and two elementary schools used primarily by foreign nationals. Parents taking their children to school had to abruptly turn around and go home as police blocked off the street in search of additional devices.

The bomber was outside Bikur Holim Hospital, a crowded maternity and general hospital. A doctor there interviewed by Israeli television said most of the wounded were young people.

Witnesses told Israeli radio that the bomber looked suspicious and was carrying a large bag. They alerted police, who approached him. He positioned himself between two cars, then blew himself up. The police officers were among the wounded.

The bomb was loaded with nails and screws that sprayed throughout the street, police said. One witness said the bomber was wearing a yarmulke as a disguise.

Today’s blast occurred one block from a pizzeria where a suicide bomber killed 15 people last month in one of the deadliest attacks in years. The area has been the site of several other blasts or of bombs detected before exploding.

An angry and exasperated Israeli President Moshe Katsav said early today that neither military might nor political negotiation seemed able to quell the violence plaguing the region. “Arafat and only Arafat holds the responsibility for this,” he said, referring to today’s bombing and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

Monday was a day of violence on several fronts, with two Palestinians killed, about 22 wounded and at least five Israelis hurt.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said he was still trying to arrange truce talks with Arafat. Nothing was set, but speculation focused on a possible meeting this week.

Asked whether a truce could be reached in the 11-month-old conflict, Peres said, “That is my hope.”

Three of the four bombs Monday went off in and around French Hill, a neighborhood in northern Jerusalem built on land Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East War. Two blasts occurred before dawn, startling residents but causing no injuries. Shortly before 8 a.m., a bomb in a car exploded, injuring one woman.

The fourth bomb was placed in a municipal pickup truck in French Hill, police said. A municipal worker, unaware of the bomb, drove the vehicle to the Gilo neighborhood on the southern outskirts of Jerusalem early Monday, and that bomb also exploded just before 8 a.m. Two people were slightly hurt.

The radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said its military wing--which it called the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigade--carried out the attacks in retaliation for last week’s killing of the group’s leader, Mustafa Zibri, widely known as Abu Ali Mustafa.

In retaliation for Monday’s bombs and for shooting attacks against Israelis in the West Bank, Israeli helicopters fired several missiles at a Palestinian security building in Dura, near the West Bank city of Hebron.

Two members of the Palestinian security forces were injured, Palestinians said.

In the divided city of Hebron, Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen battled Monday evening. Two Palestinians were killed and about 20 were injured in widespread Israeli gunfire, Palestinians said. Two Israeli soldiers were hurt in an explosion, the army said, one seriously.

In more violence near Hebron, a Jewish settler was shot and seriously wounded when his car was ambushed by Palestinian gunmen south of the city, the army and rescue services said.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.