ISRAEL: A Palestinian militant killed 11 people and injured 49 when he blew himself up on a crowded bus in Jerusalem yesterday in the first suicide bombing in Israel since the start of a general election campaign.
The explosion ripped through a bus packed with commuters and school-children during the morning rush hour.
The bombing, the first in Jerusalem since June, provided further evidence Palestinian militants were determined to make their presence felt in the run-up to Israel's January 28th ballot, and raised the spectre of harsh military retaliation.
"There was a huge explosion . . . I fell to the floor," said Mr Yitzhak Cohen, a passenger on the bus. Residents of the Kiryat Menahem neighbourhood where the bombing occurred rushed from their houses desperate to learn the fate of their children.
The militant Islamic movement Hamas claimed responsibility for the bombing and vowed more attacks. It said it was avenging Israel's "assassination" of its military leader in an air strike in Gaza in July that also killed one of his aides and 14 civilians.
Meeting on the sidelines of a NATO summit in the Czech Republic, US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair condemned the bombing.
"It is clear that those who want to use terror to stop any process for peace are still active. In order to achieve peace all countries in the region must take responsibility, do their best to fight off terror," Mr Bush told reporters.
The latest violence, including Israeli military raids, threatened to undermine US efforts to achieve calm in the region while it seeks Arab support for a possible war on Iraq.
Police said the bomber, identified by Hamas as a 23-year-old man from the Bethlehem area, was sitting at the front of the bus when he detonated his explosive belt. He killed himself and 11 others, including a 13-year-old girl and 67-year-old woman and her eight-year-old grandson. Hospital officials said half the 49 wounded were under the age of 18.
The bombing was the first in Israel since Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon called a snap election after his broad coalition government collapsed earlier this month, setting the stage for voters to make a choice between hawks and doves. Opinion polls show Mr Sharon's Likud party, boosted by the Israeli public's turn to the right amid a surge of bombings during a two-year-old Palestinian uprising for independence, widely favoured to defeat the centre-left Labour Party.
In deciding his response, Mr Sharon faces the added complication of a Likud vote next Thursday to decide whether he or his more hawkish challenger, former premier Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, will lead the party in the election. Polls have tipped Mr Sharon as the almost certain winner.
Israel has blamed the latest attack on Mr Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority for failing to rein in militants who have killed scores of Israelis in bombings.
The Palestinian Authority condemned the bombing as "terrorism" and said such attacks had nothing to do with "resistance to occupation", but that Israel was responsible for continued violence with its army crackdown on Palestinian areas.
Militants have struck hard during previous election campaigns and have made clear they will do so again. - (Reuters)