Bomber kills six in Jerusalem

Israel to reoccupy Palestinian areas

By Susan Sevareid, The Associated Press

Bomber kills six in Jerusalem — The Grand Island Independent, 20 June 2002 — The Grand Island Independent · 20 June 2002

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Transcribed from the clipping

EDITOR'S NOTE — This story was submitted to Israeli military censors as required by the government, and deletions were made. JERUSALEM — A suicide bomber sprang from a car, slipped past a pair of policemen and blew himself up at a busy Jerusalem intersection Wednesday, killing at least six other people in the second deadly attack in the city in two days.

Responding, Israeli forces early Thursday entered a suburb of the West Bank town of Ramallah. Palestinian witnesses said tanks circled a house in Beitunia, where soldiers apparently planned to make arrests. The Israeli military had no immediate comment. Soldiers also occupied Qalqiliya, placing the West Bank town under curfew.

Two Israeli soldiers were killed and three others wounded when they entered a house of a suspected militant, and shooting broke out, the military said. Shortly after the suicide attack, Israeli helicopters fired rockets at metal workshops in the Gaza Strip used to manufacture weapons. Thirteen Palestinians were hurt, two seriously, Palestinian doctors said.

A group tied to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing, according to Al Manner television station run out of Lebanon by the militant Islamic group Hezbollah.

Israel said early Wednesday that it would seize and hold parts of Palestinian territory in retaliation for terror attacks, and troops moved into three West Bank towns. In Washington, President Bush decided to hold off revealing his plan for a future Palestinian state.

Administration officials said an announcement at this sensitive time would be unlikely to have a positive effect. Aides said the announcement may be delayed until next week. Arafat was expected to call for a halt to attacks against Israeli civilians in a speech on Thursday.

An advance copy of the speech set for Palestinian TV, obtained by The Associated Press, urges and end to the attacks, because “these operations have given the Israeli government the excuse to reoccupy our land, killing hundreds of our innocent people and destroying all that we have built in the last eight years.”

In one of his strongest condemnations ever, Pope John Paul II decried Tuesday’s attack, saying “those who plot and plan such barbarous attacks will have to answer before God.” On Wednesday, the bomber emerged from a red Audi and dashed toward a concrete bus stop shelter, which is also used as a hitchhiking post.

The intersection has been targeted by assailants in the past and was heavily guarded. But the attacker made it past a pair of border policemen. “The police chased him to try to stop him, and when he got to the (bus stop), he blew up a large device,” said Jerusalem Police Chief Mickey Levy. One policeman chasing the bomber was badly hurt, Levy said.

More than 35 people were wounded, many of them seriously. [One paragraph here describes the physical aftermath of the blast and the recovery of human remains by religious volunteers; it is summarized rather than transcribed.] An overturned baby carriage was covered with black plastic by rescue workers.

Government spokesman Danny Seaman said a baby wasn’t among the dead, but one had been rushed to a hospital. Israeli troops, meanwhile, fortified their positions in the northern West Bank, suggesting plans for an extended stay. The move came after the government announced it was prepared to reoccupy Palestinian areas in response to attacks.

Tuesday’s bombing on a Jerusalem bus killed 19 people, the worst in Jerusalem in six years. Hamas claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s blast in a leaflet saying it was prepared for a prolonged offensive against Israel that it called “the war of the buses.” Hamas, based in Gaza, boasted it had dozens of suicide bombers waiting to strike.

The Palestinian leadership condemned the attack Wednesday, but Israel again held Arafat responsible. Palestinian Cabinet secretary Ahmed Abdul Rahman condemned Wednesday’s attack, as the Palestinian Authority routinely does with such bombings. But he said Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land was the underlying cause of the violence.

“We all denounce any operation against civilians — if they are Palestinians or Israelis — but the Israeli government should ask itself about what they are doing today ... and their decision to reoccupy our cities,” he said.

In a sign of the army’s longer-term intentions, seven mobile homes were brought in on flatbed trucks and set up Wednesday in a forest just outside the West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp.

How this transcription was made

Excerpt runs the full article in printed reading order (left column, then the two columns under the lower photograph, then the right column) and is therefore longer than 2,000 characters; it was kept continuous so the closing Palestinian official quote sits in its own context. One paragraph that dwells on the physical aftermath of the bombing is replaced with a single neutral bracketed clause rather than transcribed. The printed phrase "urges and end to the attacks" is kept as set. — No masthead on the clipping. The page header strip shows only a truncated URL ending "com/wire" at far left and the folio "4-A". Maria's label is corroborated indirectly but not proved: the same page (s084_3) carries local advertising for "Conestoga Mall" and phone numbers 381-7917 and 382-2222 — Conestoga Mall is in Grand Island, Nebraska, and the Grand Island Independent publishes at theindependent.com, which fits the "com/wire" fragment. Treat as label-carried, not masthead-verified. — No date line on the clipping. Internal chronology fixes it to a Thursday paper: a suicide bombing "Wednesday" at a Jerusalem bus stop killing at least six, "Tuesday's bombing on a Jerusalem bus killed 19 people," and Israeli forces entering Ramallah "early Thursday." June 20, 2002 was a Thursday, so Maria's label is internally consistent with the page.

Cite this clipping

"Bomber kills six in Jerusalem," The Grand Island Independent, 20 June 2002, p. 4-A. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2002-133. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2002-133