Palestinian militants kill seven in bus ambush

IN a carefully planned attack, Palestinian militants dressed as Israeli soldiers ambushed a bus near a Jewish West Bank settlement, then fired on its passengers as they scrambled to escape.

Seven people were killed.

It was the first deadly attack on Israeli civilians in almost a month, and it occurred hours before officials from the US, Russia, EU and UN met in New York to discuss ways of ending the violence and easing the humanitarian situation in Palestinian territories.

Several militant groups rushed to claim responsibility for the attack, which was a near replica of one in December that killed 11 people in the same place - outside the ultra-Orthodox Jewish settlement of Emmanuel, between the West Bank towns of Qalqilya and Nablus.

Witnesses reported hearing a loud explosion as the armoured bus, travelling a regular route between Emmanuel and another ultra-Orthodox town inside Israel, Bnei Brak, neared the settlement entrance.

The blast was followed by smaller grenade explosions and bursts of automatic fire that lasted for several minutes. The witnesses said three to four gunmen dressed in Israeli army uniforms opened fire on the passengers as they tried to escape.

The militants fled the scene and were being pursued by army helicopters.

Moshe Avraham Cohen, in charge of security for the settlement, said he was in his office when he heard the explosion, then drove to the scene in his armoured car, only to find it eerily quiet.

“I opened the car door a bit. Suddenly I saw three soldiers at the side of the bus. I was happy, seeing they had already arrived. I was going to ask them if they needed help, and before I could get the words out they shot at me,” he said.

He said he sped away.

Taxi driver Yitzhak Yazdi said he heard the explosion and saw stones flying over the road as he neared the scene, plumes of smoke billowing 30 feet high. “I saw two terrorists who were running away from the road and they hid behind a rock,” he said

The ambush killed seven people and injured 14, three of them seriously, police and hospital officials said. Among the injured was a two-year-old, two 12-year-olds and a pregnant woman.

The pregnant woman was shot in the head, said Ron Nachman, mayor of nearby Ariel.

In more than 21 months of fighting, 1,758 people have been killed on the Palestinian side, and 572 on the Israeli side, including yesterday’s attack.

The last fatal attack on Israeli civilians took place on June 20, when a gunman killed five Israelis in the Jewish settlement of Itamar, near Nablus in the north West Bank.

The lull in attacks was widely seen in Israel as evidence that the policy of reoccupying the Palestinian Authorities’ autonomous zones was the best method for preventing further attacks on Israelis. “If we had not been there, we would have had 12 or 10 attacks rather than one,” said Ranaan Gissin, a spokesperson for Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon.

The military wing of Hamas, Izzadine al-Qassam, claimed responsibility in two separate telephone calls to The Associated Press in Jerusalem, saying the militants responsible were safe in the Nablus area.

However, two other groups also claimed it: the Syria-based Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine said it carried out the attack. And Abu Dhabi TV said the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, affiliated with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, had claimed responsibility.

It was considered unlikely that Israel would stage a military retaliation in response to the attack as long as the talks continued in New York.