described as "hell" by witnesses, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) reported.
"There were dying people around the bus on the street," said Shimon BenYair was in bed when the blast shook his apartment. "There was smoke, fire, people were screaming. It was like hell," he was quoted as saying by the ICEJ News Service.
The 85th suicide attack in two years of fighting killed and wounded many school children, rescue workers and other officials said. ICEJ reporter Nicole Schiavi noted that "Children’s sandwiches and schoolbooks lay scattered amid and glass shards which covered the street in the suburban, low-income neighborhood."
Witness Ben Yair told the ICEJ News Service that at first he thought it was an earthquake, but "of course we immediately knew it was a terror attack."
"HELPLESS"
"You feel helpless," he was quoted as saying after seeing this devastation in front of his home and the bus stop he waits at every day. "A half hour later I’d be standing there."
The explosion occurred at 7:20 a.m. in the Kiryat Menahem suburb on a crowded bus heading towards the city center. Many of the passengers were children, the ICEJ News Service reported.
It was the first deadly bombing in Jerusalem since July 31, when seven people were killed in a bomb attack on a crowded cafeteria at the Hebrew University, the ICEJ News Service said.
The bomber has been identified as Nael Azmi Abu Hilail, 26, from Bethlehem, known to be a supporter of the Islamic Jihad group, although the radical group Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. Abu Hilail’s family said he left home Wednesday and hadn’t returned, the ICEJ News Service said.
GIRLS WOUNDED
Yoni Klein, who just moved this year to Israel from California, works with children in the neighborhood and knew one of the girls wounded in the attack. He already visited with some children who had friends caught in the bombing and planned to counsel some more students at the junior high school later.
"It’s not easy. It’s part of life here, but you’re always on your feet," he said. "These kind of things don’t really surprise anyone." Some reportedly witnesses bristled at the politicians at the scene.
"It’s like a game: "You explode, we will take the bodies away," Ben Yair said, complaining that the familiarity of the scene has desensitized people to the tragedy. "It’s a game, a game that today many children paid the price for."
SUSPECTS ARRESTED
Officials of the Palestinian Authority condemned the attack, but added that Palestinian residents have also been suffering. "Nine Palestinians that have been killed in the last 24 hours at the hands of the Israeli army," said Chief Palestinian Negotiator, Saeb Erakat.
As Israeli troops reportedly arrested two suspects, latest opinion polls suggested that an increasing number of party members support their Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s policies.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has taken a commanding 17 percentage point lead over his rival, Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a poll of Likud party members released Thursday, November 21.
"PAINFUL CONCESSIONS"
With a week to go before supporters of the center-right governing party go to the polls to choose their leader, 500 Likud members questioned indicated they support Sharon’s belief that it will be necessary for Israel to make "painful concessions" for peace, the ICEJ said.
Netanyahu favors a more hard-line stance, amid an increasing number of Palestinian suicide attacks.
