A second Palestinian suicide bomber in two days struck this embattled city Wednesday evening, killing himself and at least six other people at a bus stop.
The bombing came after Israel announced Wednesday that it would begin seizing territory held by the Palestinian Authority in retaliation for the suicide bombing on Tuesday that killed 19 people.
Israeli police officials said that more than 35 people were injured in Wednesday's attack, which came during the evening rush hour. They said the suicide bomber jumped out of a red Audi just blocks from the national police headquarters in East Jerusalem, rushed past two border policemen and detonated the explosion.
A few hours after the bombing, Israeli helicopters fired missiles at metal workshops in three areas of the Gaza Strip. Thirteen Palestinians were injured, The Associated Press reported, and the workshops were damaged. The Israeli Army said the workshops were manufacturing weapons for Palestinian militants.
There were late reports that Israeli tanks and armored vehicles had entered Ramallah and were headed toward the center of the West Bank city, where the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat has his headquarters. The police said the car that carried the suicide bomber headed for Ramallah after the explosion.
Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade, a militant offshoot of Mr. Arafat's Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for Wednesday's suicide bombing, according to a statement issued to a Beruit television station run by the Islamic guerrilla group Hezbollah.
"Zionists, leave our land because we will not stop our operations as long as there is an occupation," Al Aksa's statement said.
Another Islamic militant group, Hamas, has taken responsibility for Tuesday's bombing.
Wednesday's attack occurred even though Jerusalem's police were already on high alert after the suicide bombing on Tuesday.
The target tonight was a bus stop here in the French Hill neighborhood, a Jewish area built on land conquered by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, that is also a gathering place for settlers and soldiers hitchhiking back to settlements or bases in the West Bank. It has been attacked several times in the past and is constantly guarded by border police and surveillance cameras.
Nevertheless, initial reports indicated that "a terrorist who was dropped off from a car began running toward the bus station for travels beyond the Green Line," Police Chief Mickey Levy of Jerusalem told reporters at the scene. "Border police who regularly man the bus station tried to stop him, and as he ran by them, he detonated himself.
"The car that escaped drove towards Ramallah, and at the moment all the forces are in pursuit after the car," Chief Levy said. "We are currently deployed all over and have a helicopter flying overhead. All of the forces are deployed along the seam line in an effort to catch the car that brought the terrorists to French Hill."
The explosion blew out the back and sides of a bus shelter. Among the debris on the street were body parts, including an arm and a leg, scattered pages from a notebook, scraps of clothing and an overturned baby carriage, which rescue workers covered with a black plastic bag. Orthodox religious volunteers who scrupulously gather all the pieces of flesh for proper burial climbed ladders to search the roof and the high stone wall behind the bus stop.
In Washington, the Bush administration condemned the latest bombing.
David Baker, an official in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office, told Reuters that Wednesday's attack "shows that Palestinian terror knows no bounds and doesn't skip a beat."
As it did on Tuesday, Mr. Arafat's Palestinian Authority issued a statement condemning the latest suicide bombing. "The Palestinian leadership condemns the Jerusalem attack and urges the dispatch of international monitors to strengthen the cease-fire and stop bloodshed of Palestinian and Israeli civilians," the statement said.
Earlier Wednesday, Israel said it would hold Palestinian territory "as long as terror continues." The Israeli military moved into West Bank areas, with tanks and troops briefly entering the city of Nablus Wednesday, arresting three suspects and withdrawing. Soldiers also seized six Palestinians in the city of Hebron and two nearby villages. Its ground forces once again raided the city of Jenin and its refugee camp, and entered the town of Qalqilya overnight Tuesday.
Israeli soldiers brought mobile homes into Jenin Wednesday to use as barracks, indicating that they were planning a long stay in the West Bank town.
Israeli police arrested more than 1,000 Palestinians who entered Israeli territory illegally in the last 24 hours and sent many of them back to the West Bank.
Tuesday's suicide bombing, in which a man detonated an explosive packed with ball bearings on a crowded Jerusalem bus, killing himself and 19 passengers, was the worst in Jerusalem in six years. Slipping through the city's heightened defenses and sharpening its fears, the bomber struck a bus that seemed to present a microcosm of the mixed, anxious city - Jews and Arabs, workers and students, some of them nervously examining each new passenger. An 11-year-old girl was among the dead.
More than 50 people were wounded by Tuesday's bomb, which ripped off the top of the bus from front to back, blew out its sides, and scattered ball bearings, glass, and human remains into the street near a high school.
While volunteer workers scoured the wreckage for the remains of the dead, a woman cried out for her missing sister. At least nine black plastic body bags were lined up at the site, the soles of bare feet sticking out from one, a bloodied arm from another.
The Bush administration reaffirmed Wednesday that Israel needed to defend itself, although it urged as much restraint as possible. "The president understands Israel's right to self-defense, particularly in the wake of an attack of this severity," said Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman.
President Bush had been planning to announce a new peace initiative for the region, but administration officials said the bombings would delay it.
The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, convened his security advisers to plan a response to Tuesday's bombing, and his office issued its statement early this morning. "Israel will respond to acts of terror by capturing P.A. territory," the statement read. "These areas will be held by Israel as long as terror continues. Additional acts of terror will lead to the taking of additional areas. As a result of yesterday's murderous act of terror in Jerusalem, Israel will shortly take P.A. territory as outlined above."
The statement said Israel would also take other military actions "against the Palestinian Authority and the murderous organizations."
Under the Oslo accords, negotiated almost 10 years ago but never fully carried out, the Palestinian Authority has limited power to govern in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the territory Israel occupied in the 1967 war. In the West Bank, the Authority has full security and civil control over a series of islands, like Ramallah, surrounded by areas effectively controlled by Israel.
Since a major Israeli ground offensive into the West Bank earlier this spring, Israeli forces have been operating freely in the areas supposedly under Palestinian control, because, Israel says, the Palestinian Authority has failed to crack down on terrorism. Though troops have moved in and out, they have also seized some land for longer periods of time.
The new statement suggested that Israel would begin taking and holding larger swaths of territory.
Mr. Sharon opposed the Oslo accords; Palestinian officials have accused him of seeking to destroy the agreement and with it the possibility of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, which Oslo envisioned. The new statement comes as President Bush weighs whether to propose creating a provisional Palestinian state in part of that territory.
Before the announcement Wednesday, Bush administration officials said in Washington that the president might return Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to the region as soon as next week to address the renewed violence.
Hamas, which claimed responsibility for Tuesday's bombing, attributed it to Muhammad al-Ghoul, 22, from the Faraa refugee camp near Nablus. He was described as a master's student in Islam at An Najah National University in Nablus.
As rightist Israelis renewed their calls to oust Mr. Arafat as the Palestinian's leader, Hamas vowed on Tuesday to continue what it called "the war of buses."
"We tell the Zionists to prepare your coffins, dig your graves, because your dead will be in the hundreds," the group said in a statement.
Officials of the Palestinian Authority said Israeli raids on Mr. Arafat's security forces had rendered them powerless to stop such attacks. "We don't have a prison," said Nabil Aburdeineh, a senior aide to Mr. Arafat. "If we arrest someone, where should we put him?"
Mr. Aburdeineh said Hamas and the Israeli government were both intent on destroying the Palestinian Authority.
Members of Mr. Sharon's government, for their part, held Mr. Arafat responsible. "He cannot be here," said Uzi Landau, the minister of public security. "Arafat is of course no different than bin Laden. The P.L.O. and the Palestinian Authority is equal to the Al Qaeda."
Mr. Landau said talk from Washington about a possible Palestinian state only encouraged more violence. "This means that terrorism pays off, and why should anyone stop it?" he said.
Israeli officials compared the suicide bombing on Tuesday to the only one to exceed its death toll in this conflict, an attack at the Park Hotel in Netanya on March 27 that killed 29 people. The bombing was the deadliest in Jerusalem since Feb. 25, 1996, when 26 people died in a bus explosion.
(China Daily June 20, 2002)
