 MEGIDDO
JUNCTION, Israel (Reuters) - A Palestinian suicide
attacker exploded a powerful car bomb next to an Israeli bus Wednesday,
igniting an inferno and killing at least 16 people in a major setback to
international peace efforts.
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- Hours after the bombing, Israeli tanks rolled into Jenin
and helicopters fired at targets in the West Bank city regarded by Israel
as a militant stronghold, Palestinian witnesses said. The Israeli army
called the incursion a "routine patrol."
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- The blast in northern Israel claimed the highest number
of Israeli casualties of any attack since the end early last month of a
crushing six-week offensive through the West Bank, launched in response
to a wave of suicide bombings.
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- The militant Palestinian group Islamic Jihad said it
carried out the bombing near Megiddo, the Hebrew name for Armageddon, to
coincide with the 35th anniversary of the 1967 Middle East war in which
Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
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- "A seeker of martyrdom ... from the Jerusalem Brigades
detonated an explosives-laden car that he drove near a Zionist bus near
Megiddo junction," the group said in a statement.
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- The Palestinian Authority condemned the bombing and rejected
Israel's charge that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat was responsible
for the attack.
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- The bloodshed followed two days of talks between U.S.
CIA Director George Tenet and Palestinian and Israeli leaders intended
to initiate Palestinian Authority reforms to help stop suicide attacks.
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- The car blew up during the morning rush hour. The bus
was carrying civilians and soldiers from Tel Aviv to Tiberias by the Sea
of Galilee.
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- CAR, BUS MANGLED METAL
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- A chunk of mangled metal was all that remained of the
car and the bus. The explosion sprayed body parts and debris for hundreds
of yards across a main highway.
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- A correspondent for Israel's Army Radio described a couple
locked in a death embrace, their charred bodies hanging from one of the
bus's rear windows.
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- Police said at least 16 people were killed in the blast,
a few miles from the West Bank.
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- The use of a car bomb marked a return to a tactic employed
only sporadically by militants. Dozens of suicide bombers with explosives
strapped to their bodies have been dispatched to Israel since a Palestinian
uprising against Israeli occupation began in September 2000.
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- "I saw a vehicle just in front of us. Then I heard
the explosion and everything was fire and smoke," said Anton Borodnik,
a soldier who had been traveling on the bus with his mother, aunt and girlfriend.
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- "I kicked the door open with another soldier. I
pulled my girlfriend off and then went back and pulled my mother off and
then went back and pulled my aunt off," he said in hospital.
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- The bombing followed a resurgence of Palestinian suicide
attacks in the wake of the military offensive in the West Bank that Israel
said was intended to halt such violence.
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- Israeli forces now carry out almost daily raids into
Palestinian cities and towns, detaining suspected militants.
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- PEACE PROCESS IS THE ANSWER, SAYS PALESTINIAN
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- Commenting on Wednesday's bombing, Palestinian chief
negotiator Saeb Erekat told the BBC: "The answer to this is the resumption
of a meaningful peace process." Israel has said Palestinian violence
must end before peacemaking can begin.
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- The blast was only a few kilometers from Jenin, scene
of some of the heaviest fighting of the recent Israeli military offensive.
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- Israel's security cabinet later met for three hours in
a session scheduled before the blast. No decisions were announced and political
sources said the forum was likely to reconvene later in the day to consider
military retaliation plans.
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- An official in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office called
the bombing "another cowardly act of terror by the Palestinians, showing
again that murder and the Palestinian Authority are indistinguishable."
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- Arafat aide Ahmed Abdel-Rahman blamed the attack on the
"continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian areas."
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- He said Israeli incursions into Palestinian territories
made it impossible for the Authority to carry out security duties.
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- Tenet, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency,
has been leading the latest diplomatic drive to halt the violence, in which
at least 1,379 Palestinians and 486 Israelis had been killed before Wednesday's
attack.
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- He discussed reforms of the Palestinian security forces
with Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah Tuesday. Arafat proposed
amalgamating nine key Palestinian Authority security services into three
agencies.
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- NEGOTIATIONS CONDITIONAL
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- Israel has made any resumption of peace negotiations
with the Palestinians conditional on an end to suicide attacks and on wide-ranging
reforms within Arafat's Palestinian Authority.
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- For Israel, the goal of the reforms to the security services
would be to increase the Authority's control over Palestinian armed groups
and make it more accountable for their actions.
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- Sharon, who met Tenet Monday, is expected to repeat the
demands when he sees President Bush on June 10 at the White House, a month
after a previous visit was cut short by a suicide bombing near Tel Aviv
in which 15 Israelis died.
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- Sharon's meeting with Bush will follow the U.S. president's
talks Friday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at Camp David, with
a possible Middle East summit on the horizon.
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- White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that after listening
to Mubarak and other Middle East leaders, Bush would "determine if
there's any additional actions the United States government needs to or
should potentially take."
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