Car-bomb carnage sharpens vigilance

JERUSALEM - Israel is on alert for more violence after a car bombing yesterday in the northern city of Hadera killed two people and injured 62.

The blast came soon after Israeli soldiers had shot dead four Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

A senior Israeli security official said there was little that could be done to prevent attacks like the bomb, which exploded next to a packed bus, and another car bomb that killed two people in Jerusalem earlier this month.

However, extra officers would patrol crowded areas in cities.

Pools of blood, severed fingers and burnt-out wreckage confronted Israelis who rushed to rescue the wounded from yesterday's attack.

"I want to cry," said Shmuel, one of the first people at the scene of the bombed bus which had been blown into the air and then through the windows of a store from the force of the blast.

He said the car bomb was parked on the side of the road near a pizza restaurant when it exploded as local bus no. 7 drove by during the afternoon rush-hour.

"The bus flew into the shops, people were cut up ... people were all over the floor covered with blood," Shmuel said.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak blamed the Palestinian Authority and vowed to "get even", although the Palestinian leadership denied involvement. Israel's security cabinet met to consider a response and was due to reconvene last night for more deliberations, Israel Radio reported.

One of the dead in Hadera, Shoshana Ris, aged 21, was killed as she walked along the street, chatting with her mother on a mobile telephone. The other victim, Meir Brami, 35, was on the bus.

Doctors at Hadera's main hospital said some of the wounded, which included a baby with burns, were fighting for their lives. Police towed away the burned-out wreckage of the car which was flattened in the blast. Investigators began studying pieces of twisted metal that littered the street for clues to the attack. No group has claimed responsibility.

The violence dealt another blow to fading Middle East peace moves as United States Defence Secretary William Cohen visited Israel to appeal for an end to bloodshed that has killed 258 people, most of them Palestinians, in the past eight weeks.

Hours after the blast, tens of thousands of Israelis crowded a Jerusalem open-air mall to cheer right-wing Likud party chief, Ariel Sharon, whose visit to a site holy to Muslims and Jews in September has been blamed for triggering the latest violence. Speaking at a rally under the theme "Let the Israeli Army win," the Opposition leader vowed to restore security were he to come to power and slammed Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

"Arafat is no partner. Arafat is a brutal enemy," he said.

Israel Radio reported that Barak had telephoned Sharon and heads of other factions in Israel's fractured Parliament to drum up support for a unity government. Israeli Government spokesman Nachman Shai laid the blame for the Hadera bombing squarely with Arafat.

"This was all predictable since Yasser Arafat released scores of terrorists from Palestinian jails and gave them the green light to hit Israel in terrorist attacks any time any where," Shai said.

The US condemned the upsurge in violence.

"There is a cycle of violence that must be broken," Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said in Washington. She said she would discuss with Barak and Arafat how to create a mechanism to allow the sides to implement agreements on a ceasefire and return to peace talks, but gave no details.

Five Palestinians, killed in two separate incidents in the Gaza Strip, were to be buried yesterday.

Arafat's Fatah faction vowed a "hard and painful" response to avenge the deaths of four of its activists, shot dead by Israeli soldiers at a road block in southern Gaza.

- REUTERS

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