Jerusalem bus bombing kills 19

A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus packed with high school students and office workers yesterday, killing 19 people and wounding more than 50 in the deadliest attack in Jerusalem in six years.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed to fight "Palestinian terror" as he surveyed the carnage caused by the bombing, which could undercut US President George W. Bush's plan this week to lay out a framework for Middle East peace.

Hours later, Israeli troops near the divided city of Hebron shot dead a senior militant wanted for the killing of two international monitors in the West Bank in March and suspected in other attacks, Israeli security sources said.

The Jerusalem blast during morning rush hour lifted bus number 32 off the ground and reduced it to charred wreckage. The scream of sirens could not drown out the moans of the wounded lying in pools of blood.

Police said several teenagers were among the dead and children were among those injured in the blast, for which the militant Islamic group Hamas claimed responsibility.

With Israeli forces poised on the outskirts of Palestinian cities for weeks, Sharon summoned his security cabinet to decide on a military response.

"People were flying in the air and there was blood everywhere," said Yakir Barashi, 14, who had just stepped off another bus in south Jerusalem. "I'm afraid to go on a bus, to go to school. I saw one kid with nails cutting into his entire body."

Shalom Sabag was driving in front of the commuter bus at the time of the blast, the latest in a series of suicide bombings in a 20-month-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.

"Bodies were piled up near the door of the bus," he said. "I took off the bodies of two girls and a man. There was one girl I cannot forget. She had a long braid down her back."

The bus driver sat dead in his seat, his hands still on the steering wheel. Blood dripped down the steps of the rear door.

The bomber attacked shortly after the United States and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat criticised Israel's plans to build a security fence along its West Bank frontier through which attackers slip into Israel.

Hamas said the bus bombing was to avenge Israel's killing of Palestinians and vowed further attacks. "We tell all Zionists to prepare their coffins and graves because their dead will be in the hundreds," it said in a statement.

Police had been on alert because of warnings of bombers in the area, but they failed to catch the man who blew himself up with a bomb packed with nails and shrapnel.

Sharon rushed to the scene of yesterday's attack where, near body bags lined up side-by-side on the pavement, he declared his opposition to any idea of declaring a Palestinian state soon.

"This terrible thing that we are seeing is the continuation of the Palestinian terror and we must fight and struggle against this terror and this is what we will do," Sharon told reporters in his first visit to the scene of a bombing as prime minister.

"The terrible pictures we see here are stronger than every word. It's interesting to speculate what kind of Palestinian state they want... What are they talking about?," asked Sharon.

The latest attack coincided with a Middle East policy review in Washington and plans by Bush to chart a two-state settlement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The White House said Bush condemned the bombing "in the strongest possible terms".

The Palestinian Authority (PA) denounced the bombing, denied Israeli accusations it was to blame and pledged to hunt down those responsible, saying such attacks hurt the nationalist cause. But it called for US help to stop Israeli attacks on Palestinian areas which it said hindered its security forces.

"We condemn all attacks against civilians, whether Palestinians or Israelis," said Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, a senior aide to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw called the bombing "an act of evil beyond words". European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said he was "horrified" by the violence.

It was the deadliest bombing since a suicide attack killed 29 people at a seaside hotel on March 27, unleashing a major Israeli military offensive in the West Bank which Sharon said was intended to crush the "infrastructure of terror".

The father of the bomber, identified as 25-year-old Mohammed al-Ghoul, said from his home in a refugee camp near Nablus that he was "very happy" to hear what his son had done.

The attack took place a day after soldiers near the West Bank village of El Khader shot dead a militant from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. That ended a month-long lull in such tactics, branded as assassination by Palestinians and condemned internationally.

It was followed yesterday by the killing of Muhmad Basharat of Islamic Jihad. Palestinian security sources said he was shot during an identity check at an Israeli army roadblock.

At least 1,403 Palestinians and 530 Israelis have been killed since the Palestinian revolt began in September 2000.