Bombers Kill 38 in Iraq, Israel

A Palestinian suicide bomber blew up a bus packed with Jewish families on their way home from evening prayers Tuesday, killing at least 18 people and leaving prospects for a Middle East peace plan dangling precariously in the balance.

The strength of the blast ripped the tandem bus apart, turning metal into taffy and strewing body parts onto the narrow roadway near the entrance to an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood on the border between East and West Jerusalem.

The wounded, some of them children crying for their parents, came streaming from the site, clutching scorched heads and bloodied faces as rescue workers tried to dig out victims from beneath the debris. Hospitals reported the number of injured at more than 100, including dozens of children.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas strongly condemned the attack, the third suicide bombing in a week, and his aides later said he was cutting off talks with Palestinian militant groups.

Senior Palestinian officials said early today that Abbas intended to take steps against Hamas and Islamic Jihad, both of which claimed responsibility for the bombing, but the scope of planned punitive action was not immediately known.

It was the deadliest suicide attack in seven months and called into serious question the prospects for the latest Middle East peace initiative, known as the “road map.” Progress on the plan had been halting, and the bombing instantly froze the process, with the Israeli government suspending plans to return two West Bank cities to Palestinian control later this week and halting any contacts with Palestinian officials.

“Clearly the diplomatic process must be stopped,” Health Minister Danny Naveh told Israeli television. “There is no one in the Palestinian Authority who can take on the security responsibility.”

Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat appealed to the U.S. to intervene to keep the peace process alive.

“It’s possible” that the initiative could collapse altogether, Erekat acknowledged in a telephone interview. “This is very serious.”

In Crawford, Texas, where the Bush administration was also dealing with an apparently unrelated terrorist bombing in Baghdad, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said: “We condemn this act of terrorism in the strongest possible terms. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims, and the victims.”

The Jerusalem blast was a severe embarrassment to Abbas, who has spoken out strongly against the uprising against Israeli forces but has been reluctant to tackle militant groups head-on.

When the bombing happened shortly after 9 p.m., Abbas was in the middle of a meeting with leaders of the radical group Islamic Jihad to discuss a fragile cease-fire, or hudna, declared by the main militant organizations June 29. Islamic Jihad said Tuesday’s attack was in retaliation for the death last week of its senior operative in the city of Hebron, who was killed by Israeli troops in a shootout.

“If this is what the Palestinians call a hudna, I don’t know what they’d call a real hudna,” said Jonathan Peled, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry. “We’ve shown restraint for the past six weeks, including after two suicide bombings last week. We went the extra mile, and they went an extra bomber.”

Israel has said that it would not withdraw from parts of the West Bank, as demanded by the peace plan, until the Palestinians dismantle terrorist groups such as Islamic Jihad. But Abbas has been loath to disarm the groups, fearing a civil war, and accuses Israel of offering nothing in return for the cease-fire, which had produced relative calm.

Compromise seemed possible Friday when Israel announced that it would pull out of the West Bank cities of Jericho and Kalkilya. The government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appeared to relent from its insistence that militants in those cities be arrested, allowing Palestinian security services instead to keep them on a tight leash.

Now the pullout has been called off. The West Bank was sealed off.

Tuesday’s suicide attack has pushed the peace process back almost to square one, and mutual recrimination -- and possibly a return to wide-ranging violence -- seemed likely.

Police described the bomb that tore through Bus No. 2 on its journey back from the Western Wall as “very, very powerful.” The device was laden with ball bearings, which multiplied its lethality.

Despite the late hour, the double-length bus, consisting of two connected passenger cars, was jammed with ultra-Orthodox families returning from the Western Wall, one of the holiest sites in Judaism, where Jews go to pray, celebrate bar and bat mitzvahs and mourn the destruction of their ancient temple.

After about 20 minutes on the road, as the bus turned onto a narrow street called Shmuel Hanavi, “there was a big blackout” from an explosion, recalled Mike Weiss, a bearded yeshiva student from Brooklyn, who was sitting toward the front of the bus. “I smelled fire, and I knew right away it was a bomb.”

The attacker detonated the bomb close to the center of the bus, where the two cars connected, police said. Weiss, 18, jumped out of a shattered window. “I started to run, run, run,” he said from his gurney at the Bikur Cholim hospital in downtown Jerusalem.

Blood pooled on the ground. Moaning survivors crawled over shards of glass to find safety. Entire families rushed down the street away from the carnage.

“There were lots of little children and infants,” said Yaakov Bachar, 35, who ran out from a Torah lesson in a nearby building to tend to the wounded. “We started trying to open their throats so that we could put in tubes to help them breathe. I put one of the children in an ambulance. After that, I started helping evacuate the dead bodies.

“It was really awful -- shocking,” a dazed Bachar said. “I keep seeing it over and over.”

White body bags were laid out in a nearby traffic circle. Later, a small knot of youths gathered at the scene, chanting, “Death to Arabs!”

Police believe that the bomber was disguised as a religious Jew, a tactic that has become more common among suicide attackers hoping to slip into crowds and onto buses undetected.

Police identified the bomber as Raed Abdel-Hamed Masq, a 30-year-old Hamas operative from the West Bank city of Hebron whose identity card was found at the bombing site.

Media reports said Masq was a teacher and an imam in one of Hebron’s largest mosques. Israeli television aired the videotaped will that Masq left behind, which showed him clutching an M-16 in one hand and a copy of the Koran in the other.

It was unclear which of the competing claims of responsibility, by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, was correct, or whether the two groups had collaborated in the bombing. Islamic Jihad had been threatening a violent response to the slaying Thursday of Mohammed Sidr, its chief operative in Hebron and the alleged instigator of attacks that have killed 19 Israelis and two international observers.

Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad have said they respect their truce but reserve the right to strike back if attacked.

After four Palestinians, including Hamas fugitives, were killed by Israeli forces Aug. 8, militant groups mounted back-to-back suicide attacks Aug. 12, in which two Israelis died.

Israeli Justice Minister Tommy Lapid scoffed at the cease-fire.

“The game is over now, and the [Palestinian Authority] can no longer hide behind the word hudna without taking first steps against the terror organizations,” he said. Palestinian officials “have to decide if they want to make peace with us or with the terrorists.”