A 17-year-old female Palestinian suicide bomber carrying nearly 10 kilograms of explosives blew herself up outside Jerusalem's Mahaneh Yehuda open-air market late Friday afternoon, killing six people and wounding 84 others, seven seriously.
The victims were Yelena Konrav 43, from Pisgat Ze'ev; and Rivka Fink, 75, of Jerusalem; Nissan Cohen 57, of Ramot; Zuhila Hushi 47, of Gilo; Lin Chin Mai 34; and Chai Zin Chang 32.
Fink was buried last night at Jerusalem's Givat Shaul cemetery. Two of the people killed in the attack were foreign workers from China.
It was the second suicide bombing in the country in two days, coming after Wednesday's attack on the Egged bus making its way to Jerusalem from Haifa, in which eight people were killed, and abruptly ended a short-lived 10-day lull in suicide bombings in the capital.
The Aksa Martyrs Brigade, on the US's list of foreign terror organizations and an offshoot of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's mainstream Fatah faction, took credit for the bombing in an 'urgent' item read out on Hizbullah's Lebanese television al-Manar shortly after the attack.
The bomber, who police said was deterred from entering the market inside by the large security presence at the site, was later identified as Andaleeb Taqataqah from the West Bank village of Beit Fajar, between Bethlehem and Hebron.
The 4:18 p.m. blast, which took place as a No. 6 city bus approached its stop in front of the Hava Bakery on Jaffa Road, was heard throughout downtown Jerusalem.
As bloodied people, their faces blackened by the blast, were evacuated by medics, body parts, fruits, and vegetables lay on the street, which was littered with shard of broken glass and twisted metal from the demolished bus stop.
'I saw ripped apart bodies sprawled on the street,' said eyewitness Menachem Sudri, 16, who raced to the scene after hearing the blast from his home just meters away.
Last night, 66 people remained hospitalized in Jerusalem's four city hospitals, including seven who remained in serious condition.
Jerusalem police chief Cmdr. Mickey Levy said there was no specific warning of an impending attack at the market, which has been targeted by terrorists in the past, but that police remained on a heightened state of general alert.
'Sometimes we stop the bombers, other times we don't,' Levy said, noting that it was 'very difficult' to prevent suicide bomber once he or she was already on the way.
Internal Security Minister Uzi Landau, who has termed suicide bombers 'missiles on two feet,' said the American and European mediators should understand that their meetings with Arafat only provide the Palestinian leader with 'an incentive' for terror.
Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert, who left the market two minute before the attack, said the Americans should understand 'this is not something political' but rather 'people being killed who go out to buy halla and cake for Shabbat.'
'I was at the bakery buying halla for Shabbat when suddenly a huge explosion threw me 10 meters on the floor, which was lined with blood and bodies' recalled Vered Maman, 17, who escaped what is now her fifth terror attack without serious injury.
'It is always the same thing always the same picture, a horror unimaginable,' said MDA medic Marcel Hass, who moved to Israel from Switzerland three years ago, and was one of the first on the scene.
