8 killed, 60 hurt in Israel bus blast

JERUSALEM -- A Palestinian man blew himself up on a public bus crowded with schoolchildren and workers bound for central Jerusalem yesterday morning, killing eight people and wounding about 60. The terrorist attack took place the day before a controversial World Court hearing on Israel's construction of a barrier separating the country's population centers from the Palestinians.

The blast, on a crisp, sunny, late-winter morning, destroyed a Route 14 bus between the Talpiot industrial area and the heart of Jerusalem, spreading mayhem and body parts at an intersection near where leaders of major American Jewish organizations were listening to a talk by the chief of staff of the Israeli army.

Responsibility for the attack -- which left a horrific tangle of severed limbs, schoolbooks, shoes, eyeglasses, backpacks, and pocketbooks on the floor of the bus -- was claimed by the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a wing of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction. The attack was strongly applauded by Islamic militant organizations, including Hamas and Hezbollah.

"The destiny of every Zionist in the land of Palestine is to be killed, slain, kidnapped," Hamas said in a statement on its website. It said Palestinian militants have a "complete plan to crush the Zionist occupiers, expel them from the land of Palestine, and clean the Islamic land of their desecration, filth, and usurpation."

From the halls of government buildings to the blood-spattered streets around the bombing site, Israelis said the attack proved the legitimacy of the separation barrier better than any legal argument could.

"Palestinian terrorism should be on trial in The Hague, not Israel's security fence," Foreign Ministry spokesman Yonatan Peleg said at the scene of the bombing. "Most probably, the fence would have stopped this. The fence is proving increasingly effective. Unfortunately, it is not yet complete."

World Court hearings on the barrier, requested by the United Nations General Assembly, are scheduled for today at The Hague. Israel is staying away from the session, as are the United States, the European Union, Russia, and Japan, all of which say the barrier is a matter for negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians, not for the court. Israelis and Palestinians alike have organized demonstrations in the streets outside the court.

Nir Barkat, leader of the opposition in Jerusalem's city council, was supposed to have traveled to The Hague as a demonstrator. Other commitments kept him from going, and just before 8:30 yesterday morning he was driving to a school where he is participating in an education improvement project. He was 50 yards from the bus, heading toward it, when the blast occurred.

"It exploded in front of my eyes," Barkat said. "Pieces from the back of the bus flew all over." He told a passenger in his car to call the emergency services, and ran to the bus.

"I helped people climb out the windows, then went on in" to help the more severely injured, he said. "You can't imagine what I walked through in there. It is a very, very hard thing to see."

Hair dryers spattered with blood, cups of half-eaten yogurt, a bloodied prayer book, a a sixth-grader's civics text, and hunks of human hair and flesh were strewn about. Cellphones buried in the rubble rang continually as news of the attack spread and anxious relatives tried to contact their loved ones. A rescue worker picked up one cellphone that registered 54 unanswered calls after the bomb was detonated.

Michal Shalem was a passenger in Barkat's car.

"Suddenly, there was a huge blast and a ball of fire erupted from the bus," she said. "Then, there were a couple of minutes of total silence. It was as if this was a movie and the frame froze. Then the sirens and the ambulances started, and the movie restarted. . . . There were bodies, body parts, possessions of people, all scattered on the street. People slumped in their seats, . . . the horrible line of white body bags. It was like what you always see on TV, but in real life it is completely different."

Dr. Zehava Nevies, a dentist, was on the bus because she had left her car to be serviced in Talpiot. Like the bus driver and two security men who boarded and left the vehicle during the run from the industrial zone to the bombing site, she saw nothing suspicious before the blast.

"I was on the phone when suddenly there was an explosion," Nevies said. "After the initial shock, I saw people that were hurt really bad."

To her right was a tangle of severed legs, and "my feet hurt, so I checked to see if they were still attached to me. I didn't want to move, I just wanted to stay there and rest . . . I believe there is no one in Israel who doesn't imagine himself in such a scene . . . but when it actually happened I told myself, `Uh-oh, now it is happening to me.' It was surreal." National Police Superintendant Gil Kleiman said last night that investigators think the bomber boarded the bus near the beginning of its run in Talpiot, carrying the bomb in a bag on his lap.

He noted that the bomber, a 23-year-old Palestinian from a village near Bethlehem who is survived by a young son and a pregnant wife, was on the bus for an unusually long time before the bomb was detonated. Bombers usually set off their devices almost immediately after gaining access to a target.

Kleiman said police and security forces will be on high alert today because of the demonstrations planned to coincide with the hearings at The Hague and because of calls among Palestinians for a "day of rage" against construction of the barrier.

The Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, condemned the bombing in a prepared statement and called for an immediate cease-fire between the sides and a return to talks. But Qurei has refused to meet with his Israeli counterpart, Ariel Sharon, unless construction of the barrier is halted -- a move that was considered extremely unlikely even before yesterday's attack.

Jad Ishaq, director of the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem, an organizer of widespread protests planned over the hearing today by Palestinians, said: "Most Palestinians say this suicide bombing is a mistake. Its timing is inappropriate. It harms the Palestinian interests. The time has come to campaign against these attacks which kill civilians. They should be stopped. This has affected negatively our protest campaign against the wall. We expect that the number of protesters will tremendously decrease."

Zionist Organization of America president Morton Klein, one of several American Jewish leaders who came to the blast scene, said such sentiments are typical of Palestinian leaders who, he added, condemn terror attacks only for tactical reasons and ignore moral arguments against them. He called on US officials to cut off aid and negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and to support Israel in crushing what he called the Palestinians' rogue terrorist regime.

Globe correpondent Alon Tuval contributed to this report. Charles A. Radin can be reached at radin@globe.com