MIDDLE EAST: The smell of burning flesh hung over west Jerusalem yesterday morning. Nuala Haughey reports from the scene of the latest suicide bombing.
The force of the blast sent body parts flying into nearby gardens and homes. One man saw a severed arm lying on the road outside his shop and inhaled the unmistakable smell of burnt flesh.
Yesterday's shrapnel-packed suicide bomb on a crowded bus in an attractive and quiet leafy district of west Jerusalem claimed the lives of at least 10 people, with some 50 injured.
A Palestinian bomber detonated the device shortly before 9 a.m. as the No 19 bus passed a small junction around 100 metres from the official residence of Ariel Sharon. He was not at home at the time.
The blast, towards the rear of the vehicle, blew out all its windows and ripped off its green and white external casing, leaving only a scorched metal carcass.
Part of the roof was peeled back like a sardine tin, its jagged edges fanned skywards. The vehicle had been moving through the tree-lined streets of the residential Rehavia district of the city in the final flurry of the morning rush hour when the device was detonated.
Within minutes, emergency medical personnel were on the scene and ambulance sirens wailed incessantly through the city's main thoroughfares as the injured were ferried to hospital.
Dozens of personnel worked swiftly to collect body parts and personal items from the scene, placing them in white plastic bags. By mid-morning the debris was largely cleared away. Several feet from the wreck of the vehicle, a trickle of blood flowed from the covered remains of a torso and an arm, severed from the elbow down. The limb looked like a prosthetic piece, still sheathed in a white shirt, which was amazingly clean.
Mr Meshulan Perlman (59) was about to put a plant in a hanging basket outside his Lilac flower shop when the explosion occurred about 25 metres away, sending shards of the bus whizzing past him.
"For a while it was quiet, people were in shock . . . and after a minute they began to cry to people to help us, to save us," he said.
Mr Perlman said he saw the lower half of a girl's body lying on the road near the bus. "I saw on the bus a woman trying to get help who was around 50 years old and we couldn't help her because she had a seat trapping her and a head was lying on it," he added.
Mr Stephen Ben Shushan (30) had just parked his car and was walking towards his chic little French-style chocolate shop when he heard the blast.
He saw the lower half of an arm lying on the sidewalk outside his premises, a few metres away from the bus. "There was a horrible smell of blood," he said. "There is a smell of blood, you can smell it, and the smell of burning, like burning meat."
An Israeli police spokesman, Mr Gil Kleiman, said the bomber had carried about 15 pounds of explosives into the bus in a bag. He described the bomb as a "very powerful explosive device" to which fragments had been added for maximum damage.
"Parts of the roof [of the bus] were found on roofs of buildings in the area," he said, speaking at the scene. "We have police forensics units in the homes and gardens gathering up body parts."
The bomber was identified as Ali Jaara (24), a Palestinian policeman from the Aida refugee camp in the West Bank town of Bethlehem.
He said in a note he left that he wanted to avenge eight Palestinians killed during an Israeli raid in the Gaza Strip the day before.