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April 24, 2003
One dead, 14 hurt in central Israel suicide blast
By Joel Leyden
A suicide bomber blew himself up at a busy train station in Kfar Sava on Thursday morning, killing a security guard who stopped him from getting onto a crowded platform and wounding 14 other people in the town northeast of Tel Aviv, police said.
Among the wounded was another guard listed in serious condition. All casualties were rushed to Kfar Sava's Meir Hospital and to Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikvah.
Israel Radio said the attack was perpetrated by the Al Aksa Brigades, a wing of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
The bomber, identified as an 18-year-old from the Nablus area, detonated a belt packed with five to 10 kgs. of explosives at the entrance to the station at about 7:20 a.m. local time, police said. The attack occurred just as a train pulled out of the station destined for Tel Aviv and another was scheduled to pull in.
An alert security guard gave his life to prevent a worse disaster by demanding to see the suspicious youth's identity papers which kept him from reaching the platform crowded with some 250 people, Sharon district police chief Amichai Shai said. The bomber set off his explosives right next to the guard, and both died instantly.
"This is a true hero who prevented a huge disaster," Shai told The Jerusalem Post in an interview shortly after the attack.
Police said the bomber arrived at the train station via Egged bus no. 10 from central Kfar Sava. He was with a group of female soldiers, and almost blended in with his jeans and spiked hair-do. But he also wore a suspicious-looking black coat despite the seasonably warm day, which may have been what raised the suspicions of the security guard.
The radio identified the bomber as Ahmed Khatib, 18, from Balata refugee camp, near the West Bank city of Nablus. It said he was from the Al Aksa Brigades.
Alarm bells were still going off at the station for about an hour after the attack as demolition experts scoured the blown out station for more bombs. A helicopter flew overhead, and three ambulances remained at thremained at the site in the event of further casualties.
The entire entrance of the station, which was opened just two weeks ago, was blown away by the blast and pieces of twisted metal hung from the ceiling. Pieces of glass were strewn as far as 30 meters away.
The attack follows a quiet Pessah holiday but one in which several suicide bomb attacks were averted by security forces who arrested would-be bombers in West Bank cities and refugee camps before they could set out for an attack.
Kfar Sava is a town close to Israel's frontier with the West Bank that has been the site of previous terror attacks.
The city's mayor, Yitzhak Wald, at the scene of the attack, told The Post that life in Kfar Sava would proceed as normal on Thursday despite the bombing.
"We are not going to stop living our lives in spite of the terror attack that we face here in Kfar Sava this morning and that we face daily in Israel," said Wald, a 20-year veteran in his job.
Wald demanded that Mahmud Abbas, the newly chosthe newly chosen Palestinian prime minister, fight terrorism "by deeds, and not just by words."
Asked whether he expected the situation to improve under Abbas, who is known as Abu Mazen, Wald replied:
"I don't think we will see any results immediately in terms of preventing terrorism. We must be patient, this is a process."
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