Suicide Bomber on Bus in Israel Kills 15

A bus filled with students was rumbling through these seaside streets Wednesday afternoon when a suicide bomber climbed aboard, settled into a back seat and set off an explosives belt packed tightly with shrapnel.

The blast killed at least 16 people, including the bomber, and wounded 55.

The carnage in this scenic port town was the result of the first terrorist attack in two months within Israel’s borders. Among the passengers slain aboard the No. 37 bus were high school students, soldiers and Avigail Leitner, a 14-year-old U.S. citizen.

At least two 13-year-old children were killed, and a witness said he saw a pregnant woman dead in the wreckage.

The bomber was identified as Mahmoud Hamdan Kawasme, a 20-year-old from the West Bank city of Hebron.

In an Arabic letter that was tightly folded to survive the blast, Kawasme said the destruction of the World Trade Center was foretold in the Koran, the sacred text of Islam.

The letter extolled the “miracles of the Koran” and urged readers to pass the news. “A sort of will, if you like,” said Jonathan Peled, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman.

Angry Israeli officials immediately blamed the Palestinian Authority for failing to control militant factions.

A few hours later, tanks and helicopters stormed the largest refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Machine-gun fire and missiles crackled throughout the night in the streets of Jabaliya, and doctors counted at least 11 Palestinian deaths by daybreak today.

The dead included bystanders who had gathered to watch firefighters battle a blaze that was sparked in the overnight combat. Witnesses said Israeli soldiers fired a tank shell into the crowd, killing eight and wounding more than 100 people.

Among Israelis, Wednesday’s bloodshed was held out as proof that the recent pause in suicide attacks was thanks to deft military and intelligence work -- not for lack of effort on the part of violent Palestinian factions. During the last two months, security forces have foiled 57 strikes, Peled said.

Palestinian leaders quickly repudiated the slaughter of innocent commuters. The United States, Britain, the United Nations and the European Union also decried the attack. None of the Palestinian factions immediately claimed responsibility, although Hamas and Islamic Jihad praised the bombing.

“We will continue our resistance to the occupation,” Hamas spokesman Abdulaziz Rantisi said. “Whenever they escalate their campaign against innocent people, they should expect a reaction.”

A Town of Coexistence

This secular seaside town is known for the relatively amicable coexistence of its Arab and Jewish residents, and a Christian Arab driver was behind the wheel when the explosion roared through the bus.

“I opened my eyes and saw the entire bus devastated,” a bleary-eyed Marwan Damouni, the driver of the bus, said from his hospital bed. “People lying on the floor. Blood.”

Leon Sokolosky awoke from his midday nap when his building quaked and the front windows crashed in shards to the floor. A 76-year-old retiree, Sokolosky lives alone in a small apartment overlooking the scene of the explosion. Jolted awake, he fumbled groggily downstairs to the curb and began administering first aid to a wounded man, until the chaos and carnage turned his stomach.

“I came back upstairs and cried like a boy,” he said later.

His stiff shoes crunching over broken glass, he watched forlornly from his wrecked porch as rescue workers clambered over the twisted steel skeleton below. His hands were stuffed into his pockets, his blue eyes watery. “How could anybody do such a thing? It hurts me, it hurts me, it hurts me.”

Most Israelis regard the past weeks as a rare break from the violence that has pounded away at this region since the intifada, or uprising, began 29 months ago. To Palestinians, however, this winter left ominous memories. In a steady trickle, Israeli soldiers have killed 80 Palestinians in the last month. The Israeli government says the army is carrying out targeted operations against terrorists. But the dead have included civilians and bystanders; a Bedouin shepherd and a pregnant woman; youngsters and the elderly.

Israel closed the West Bank and Gaza Strip in response to the Haifa blast. Soldiers flattened at least two buildings in Gaza overnight. In the morning, 30 of the wounded Palestinians were clinging to life, hospital staff said. The violent overnight raid came hours after Israeli officials said the nation would refrain from adding to tensions while the threat of war in Iraq shadows this deeply troubled region.

Bus bombings are a common Palestinian tactic -- and among the cruelest, spilling the blood of blue-collar commuters, schoolchildren and senior citizens. Wednesday’s blast peeled the roof clean off the bus and scattered clothing, bodies and charred chunks of steel over lush lawns.

Blood soaked the street and, hours after the blast, cries of “An arm! An arm!” still went up from rescuers. “You won’t sleep tonight if you see it,” police spokesman Daniel Kopler said, nodding in the direction of the bus.

As the afternoon wore on, a dazed panic enveloped the boulevard, where aging stucco cubes rise from verdant nests of rose, pine and palm.

This is a street of cafes and beauty parlors, and gardens and apartments whose windows open to wide views of the hills of Galilee.

Hysterical families dashed to police lines, frantic for loved ones lost in the chaos.

Everybody, it seemed, had a mobile phone pressed to one ear.

A boy with a shaved head hoisted a cardboard sign reading, “Peace Starts When Terrorism Ends.”

“Up there, up there!” cried a gaggle of neighborhood children.

“Where?” a neighbor demanded.

“See?” They pointed to the wall of an apartment house.

It was there, but it was tiny -- a smudge of red clinging to the crevice of a stucco wall. A tall man with side locks climbed onto a nearby fence, stretched upward and swabbed the spot with a white cloth.

He folded the kerchief over the scrap of flesh, hopped back to earth and strode off without a glance at the children.

He was one of the ultra-Orthodox Jews who turn out at every terrorist attack to retrieve the scraps of flesh and blood. Driven by fervor to collect and bury all that remains of the body, they searched determinedly throughout the afternoon for far-flung carnage.

Finally, when the worst was cleared away, they assembled 10 men, turned to the east and rocked in silent prayer.

Recounting the Horror

In a bright living room two stories up, a retired policeman sat woodenly before his television set, staring at the vibrant images of the street below. Izzu Shapsa, 64, had just stepped off a bus with an armful of fruit and vegetables when the bomb went off out front.

Victims stacked into taxis because at first there were no ambulances.

“It’s one thing to see it on television. It’s another thing to see it in real life, under your window,” he said.

In his apartment, Sokolosky packed a suitcase. His son had come to take him away for a few days. He paused by his window and shook his head.

“The worst thing is they’ll clean it all up,” he said, “as if nothing ever happened.”