12 killed in separate attacks in Israel

ISRAEL was reeling yesterday after separate attacks by a suicide bomber and Palestinian gunman left at least 12 people dead.

At least nine people died and dozens were wounded when a suicide bomber blew up a bus in northern Israel during yesterday morning’s rush hour.

Three hours later, three people died when a Palestinian attacker opened fire just outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, sparking a gun battle with police. The dead were an Israeli security guard, an Arab bystander and the gunman.

The bus attacked in northern Israel was packed with people on their way to work, including a number of

soldiers returning to their base at the beginning of the work week in Israel.

A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said that in the wake of the violence, Israel had suspended talks it had planned in the coming days with Palestinian officials on security and easing hardships in West Bank cities under curfew.

The bus explosion happened at the Meron Junction near the town of Tsfat. The militant group Hamas claimed responsibility in a statement received in Lebanon by Hezbollah’s television station, Al-Manar.

Hamas said a suicide bomber had detonated the bomb in the second retaliatory attack for the death of Hamas’ military leader, Salah Shehadeh, killed along with 14 other people in an Israeli bombing in Gaza City last month.

The blast came four days after a bomb exploded in a cafeteria at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, killing seven people, including five Americans. Hamas claimed responsibility for that bombing as well.

The attacks in recent days prompted Israel to raid the West Bank city of Nablus on Friday in a hunt for militants. Israeli troops remained in the city last night. Police spokesman Yaron Zamir said the nine people who died in the bus bombing included a number of soldiers.

David Peretz, head of the emergency ambulance service Magen David Adom in northern Israel, said 37

people were injured, two critically.

“I picked up four dead myself,” Haim Ben-Shimon, a civilian who was nearby at the time of the blast, told Army Radio.

“The bus is simply crushed. It looks as if the explosion happened in the centre of the bus.” The windows were completely blown out of the bus, and part of its roof and side were torn open by the force of the blast, with debris scattered all around the area.

Soldiers in flak vests and medical crews swarmed the scene as ambulances took away the injured.

Television footage from nearby hospitals showed several of the injured wearing green army uniforms. “A soldier came out with his face and uniform covered with blood, and two Arabs from the nearby restaurant gave him first aid,” said witness Pinhas Cohen.

The Palestinian leadership condemned the bombing, but also accused Sharon of “war crimes” for the Israeli army’s mass detentions, home demolitions and curfews imposed on Palestinians. In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, soldiers shot dead an armed Palestinian dressed in a wet suit who had apparently swum to an area near the Jewish settlements of Dugit and Alei Sinai, the army said.

Also yesterday, the army pressed its new policy of demolishing homes of suicide bombers and other militants, blowing up nine houses in West Bank _ four in the Jenin area, three in Nablus and two in Hebron.