- BEERSHEBA, Israel (Reuters)
-- Palestinian suicide bombers killed at least 15 people in simultaneous
attacks on two Israeli buses on Tuesday, breaking a long lull in such violence
and potentially disrupting an Israeli plan to pull out of Gaza.
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- The bombings in southern Israel's largest city Beersheba
were the first since March 14, when suicide attackers killed 10 people
in the port of Ashdod after hiding in a container transported there from
Gaza.
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- The Islamist militant group Hamas claimed responsibility
for the two bus attacks, saying in a leaflet seen in the West Bank city
of Hebron that they were in revenge for Israel's assassination of the group's
two top leaders in helicopter missile strikes in March and April.
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- The bombers boarded the buses at the same stop near Beersheba's
central bus station and detonated hidden explosive belts when the two vehicles
were only a few dozen meters (yards) apart, triggering blasts that wrecked
the buses and sent smoke pouring into the sky.
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- Israeli television stations said at least 15 people were
killed and medics said more than 80 were wounded, some very seriously.
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- "I was thrown into the air and saw nothing but red
around me," Eli Oren, a badly wounded 50-year-old, told television
crews in a Beersheba hospital.
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- Medics pulled the limp form of a young woman through
the shattered window of one bus and put it into a black body bag as other
emergency workers rushed to the spot to collect pieces of flesh in accordance
with Jewish tradition.
-
- Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie, visiting Alexandria,
condemned the bombings. "Killing civilians, whether from the Palestinian
side or from the Israeli side, will achieve nothing except hatred and more
enmity and therefore we condemn that strongly," he told Reuters.
-
- Both the European Union and the White House joined Qurie
in condemning the attacks. Such violence "seriously undermines all
efforts to find a solution to the Middle East conflict," EU foreign
policy chief Javier Solana said in a statement.
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- ATTACKS HARM PULLOUT PLAN
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- The attacks could damage Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon's bid to overcome right-wing resistance to his plan to "disengage"
from conflict with Palestinians by pulling out of occupied Gaza and a small
part of the West Bank in 2005.
-
- Israel Radio quoted a senior government official as saying
the Beersheba bloodshed was designed to sabotage Sharon's plan, which rightists
in Sharon's coalition contend would "reward Palestinian terrorism."
-
- Shortly before the Beersheba bombings, Palestinian militants
renewed their vow to continue fighting Israel until it quit all territories
it occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.
-
- "Up to now Sharon has been selling the world words
and not deeds. We should disregard his statements, and fight on, until
every last Zionist soldier and settler quits our land," Islamic Jihad
spokesman Khaled al-Batsh said in Gaza City.
-
- Israeli soldiers at a Gaza border terminal captured a
would-be suicide bomber on Tuesday who was wearing a new form of explosives
belt hidden in his underwear, the army said.
-
- Palestinian suicide bombers have killed more than 400
people in Israel since the start of an uprising nearly four years ago.
In the same time, Israel has killed more than 3,000 Palestinians in armored
raids and air strikes in Gaza and the West Bank.
-
- Earlier on Tuesday, Sharon set out a timetable for steps
toward pulling 8,000 Jewish settlers out of Gaza, telling lawmakers of
his party Likud that a draft bill establishing rules for compensating uprooted
Jewish settlers would be put to his ministers by Sept. 26.
-
- The bill would go to a cabinet vote by Oct. 24, paving
the way for a reading in parliament on Nov. 3, he said.
-
- "Disengagement will be carried out. Period,"
Sharon said, signaling his continuing resolve to defeat Likud hard-liners
bent on thwarting any retreat.
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- Sharon's unilateral plan has destabilized his coalition.
But he is counting on majority support in opinion polls, and the reluctance
of rightists to risk parliamentary seats at early elections, to achieve
the withdrawal.
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- - Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza,
Allyn Fisher-Ilan in Jerusalem, Edmund Blair in Cairo
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