'Revenge attack' claimed victims from around world

A bomb that blew apart a Jerusalem university cafeteria, killing seven people, claimed victims from around the world, in what an Islamic terror group said was revenge for an Israeli attack.

Hamas took responsibility for yesterday’s blast that shattered the cafeteria at the Frank Sinatra International Student Centre at the heavily-guarded Mt Scopus campus of the Hebrew University, injuring more than 80. The cafeteria was a popular gathering spot for Jewish, Arab and foreign students.

The US state department said three Americans were among the dead, but their names were not released. Four were wounded.

Israeli police identified two of the dead as Israelis, and media reports said the others were foreign nationals.

Unlike other recent Palestinian attacks, this was not a suicide bombing, said Jerusalem police spokeswoman Sigal Toledo. “The bomb was in a bag that was planted on a table in the centre of the restaurant,” she said.

The 22-month Palestinian-Israeli conflict has been dominated by more than 70 Palestinian suicide bombings, killing more than 250 bystanders. Yesterday’s bombing was by far the deadliest in Israel not perpetrated by a suicide attacker.

It came as Israel’s security cabinet considered ways to stop, or at least hinder suicide bombers, including measures like expelling relatives of bombers from the West Bank to Gaza or destroying their houses.

Israeli troops control seven of the eight main Palestinian centres in the West Bank, moving in after back-to-back suicide bomb attacks in Jerusalem on June 18 and 19. The university bombing and a suicide attack the day before that wounded seven were the first bombings in Jerusalem since the takeover.

The change in bombing tactics might have been related to the pending Israeli measures, but in Gaza, where Hamas is strongest, about 10,000 Palestinians celebrated in the streets and called for more “martyrdom operations”, as they call suicide bombings.

“This operation today is a part of a series of operations we will launch from everywhere in Palestine,” a masked Hamas militant, dressed in a green military uniform, said over a loudspeaker.

Hamas called it revenge for Israel’s air strike last week that killed a top Hamas militant, Salah Shehadeh, and 14 others, including nine children. At the request of the masked Hamas speaker, the entire crowd knelt to pray that future Hamas attacks “would succeed against the enemy of God”.

Yesterday’s blast shattered not only the cafeteria, but also the concept that the university was one of the few places where Jews and Arabs could still mingle freely. The wounded included Arabs as well as Jews and foreigners, including four Americans.

Spencer Dew, 26, an American student from Owensboro, Kentucky, who was hurt by flying glass, said he had worried about such attacks in Israel, “but it didn’t deter me from coming. I assume I’ll come back next year”.

The Palestinian Authority said in a statement that it “absolutely condemns the attack against Hebrew University”. However, the Palestinian leadership also said it “considers Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon responsible for this cycle of terror”.

Sharon’s government blamed Arafat. “Israel is fighting a pitched battle against terror, and for the right to walk down the street, take a bus or sit in a cafeteria without the fear of being decimated by Palestinian terrorism,” said David Baker of the prime minister’s office.

In Washington, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer denounced the attack. He said the bombing “underscores again the need for the Palestinian people and Palestinian leadership to take action to halt terrorism”.

US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson had met Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and was on his way to Gaza to see Hamas spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin when he received news of the bombing. He cancelled the visit, complaining that Hamas claimed it “with some sense of celebration”.

Jackson told The Associated Press, “This was not an act of liberation. This was an act of terror against innocent people.” He said Arafat agreed that bombings must be stopped. “There’s nothing about an act of terror that will get them their two-state solution,” Jackson said.

In Washington, state department spokesman Philip Reeker welcomed Jackson’s decision to cancel his Gaza meeting. “We don’t think that meeting with Sheik Yassin or other leaders of foreign terrorist organisations is a good idea,” he said.

* In the town of Beit Jalla, next to Bethlehem, the Israeli military destroyed the family house of Haza Yusuf, who carried out a suicide bombing attack on Tuesday in Jerusalem that injured seven Israelis. Military sources said the destruction was a deterrent measure to show that such actions had a price.