Suicide attack on Jerusalem bus kills eight

ISRAEL: Eight Israelis were killed and more than 30 people were still in Jerusalem hospitals last night after a Palestinian suicide bomber blew up a bus in the morning rush hour in the city's German Colony neighbourhood.

Among the dead was Yehuda Haim, whose sister is the secretary of Israel's consul in The Hague, where hearings start today at the International Court of Justice on the legality of Israel's West Bank security barrier.

Israel's Foreign Minister, Mr Silvan Shalom, said the bombing "proves just how urgent it is to build the fence. It is a clear preventive measure."

Not all the other victims had been named last night, but at least two of them were 18-year-olds and many of the injured were schoolchildren.

Alluding to The Hague hearing, the Palestinian Authority Prime Minister, Mr Ahmed Korei, said he condemned "such kinds of acts which target civilians, particularly in these days".

The bomber, 23-year-old Mohammad Za'al, was a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

Married with a two-year-old child and a pregnant wife, Za'al came from the village of Hussan, just south of Jerusalem and near to Bethlehem, and crossed the municipal boundary in one of the many areas south of the city where the security barrier has not been completed - as did the suicide bomber who carried out the last bus bombing in Jerusalem three weeks ago.

Za'al got on the bus about eight stops before he detonated the device he was carrying, during which time, fellow passengers later told police, two security guards walked through the bus checking passengers. The Israeli army sealed off Hussan and Bethlehem, and arrested several members of the bomber's family. Anticipating that their home would be demolished - a measure now routinely taken by Israel after a bombing, in an effort to deter further attacks - the family ripped their air-conditioning unit out of the wall, and the marble counter-tops from their kitchen.

A Hamas spokesman, Mr Abdel-Aziz al-Rantisi, praised the attack as a case of "Palestinian youth murdering the murderers" - a reference to Za'al's statement, in a "farewell video," that he was bent on avenging the deaths of 12 Palestinians, most of them gunmen, who were killed in clashes with the Israeli army in Gaza's Saja'iyeh neighbourhood on February 11th.

Israel's Defence Minister, Mr Shaul Mofaz, held consultations with security chiefs on a possible response to the attack, but intensive military action is unlikely, particularly given Israel's desire to emphasise the self-defence imperative behind the construction of the security barrier, and the sense that the timing of yesterday's bombing might generate sympathy for its position.

Mr Mofaz suggested to fellow cabinet ministers yesterday that the attack might have been timed to demonstrate that the barrier could not provide protection for Israelis. Indeed, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, in their statement of responsibility, bragged that the "Nazi wall" would "not stop us attacking".

The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, was quoted as having said that Israel's Arab enemies needed no pretext to attack and that "they won't stop killing Jews ever".

In a move plainly timed to coincide with The Hague hearings, Israel yesterday began demolishing a five-mile section of the security barrier that has essentially sealed off some 7,500 Palestinians, in the village of Baka al-Sharkiyah, from the rest of the West Bank. The area is already fenced off from sovereign Israel by a second barrier, and a military spokesman said that the "security considerations" that had led to the construction of the controversial section had now been resolved.

Palestinian leaders have castigated the security barrier as a "land grab".