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September 23, 2004
Two killed in Jerusalem bombing
ETGAR LEFKOVITS
An 18-year-old female Palestinian suicide bomber wearing a bag of explosives on her back blew herself up near a crowded Jerusalem bus stop at the French Hill intersection Wednesday afternoon after being stopped by a border policeman, killing him and his partner and wounding 16 civilians.
The two border policemen killed in the blast were identified as Cpl. Mamoya Tahio, 20, of Rehovot, and Cpl. Menashe Komemi, 19, of Moshav Aminadav.
Menashe's cousin, Naval commando Second Petty Officer Ra'anan Komemi, was killed last year during his IDF service in a gun battle with Palestinians in Nablus.
Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat’s mainstream Fatah faction, claimed responsibility for the attack, and identified the bomber as Zayneb abu Salem from the Askar refugee camp near Nablus.
According to police and eyewitness accounts, the bomber, her face almost completely covered in a head scarf, was approaching the heavily guarded bus stop just before 3:40 p. m. when she was stopped by one of the two border policemen at the adjacent hitchhiking post.
When the security officer asked her to show her identity papers and to open her bag for inspection, the bomber began arguing with him, and then almost immediately set off three to five kilograms of shrapnel-packed explosives.
"The operation of the Border Police officers today in Jerusalem prevented a very big attack at the bus stop," Jerusalem police chief Ilan Franco said.
The blast completely gutted the hitchhiking post, sending chunks of human flesh flying into the city’s main northern thoroughfare, and spraying shards of glass onto the busy road that leads out of Jerusalem.
Eyewitnesses recounted seeing the bomber approaching the bus stop, the tension visible on her face.
"I saw the terrorist coming. I knew she was a terrorist straightaway; you could see the tension and cruelty in her face," recalled eyewitness Avigail Hilini, 22, who was making her way home to the West Bank settlement of Mitzpe Yeriho.
"She was totally covered in a large brown shawl, except for her face and eyes. I saw that the border policeman was checking her, and I calmed down a bit. Seconds later she exploded. I saw people running everywhere and I ran myself. I started shaking and crying."
Meters away, the 20 or so people at the busy and oft-targeted bus stop ran for shelter. Most escaped with light injuries thanks to the action of the border policeman, who was killed instantly. The second border policeman died on the operating table at Hadassah-University Hospital at Mount Scopus.
"I was waiting for the bus and suddenly I heard screams and I saw dust and I just started crying," said Freda Amsalem, 40, of Ma’aleh Adumim, who was lightly wounded in the blast.
"I called my husband on my cellphone and all I wanted was to see my kids," she said, noting that her own mother was lightly wounded in a previous Jerusalem bombing.
As the smell of burnt rubber and human flesh wafted in the air, paramedics and rescue officials rushed the injured to hospital. Police and rescue workers, some wearing white plastic chemical-protection suits, scoured the ground for pieces of the bomb and human remains.
"It was a serious attack, one which obliges us to continue fighting terrorism as we have in the past," Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said.
Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski said the attack emphasized the need for the government to speed up construction of the security barrier going up around Jerusalem, which he dubbed "the wall of life." To date, only a quarter of the planned 64-km. Jerusalem-area barrier has been completed.
According to a senior officer in the Jerusalem Police, the two deaths could have avoided "had the gap in the Jerusalem fence been closed."
The officer coincidentally attended an inspection of the security barrier’s possible route from Jerusalem to the Hebron Hills on Wednesday. The stretch of barrier in question between the Shuafat refugee camp and the Palestinian town of Anata has "been sitting on a judge’s desk for half a year. Unlike the two dead boys, he seems to have all the time in the world," said the officer.
Wednesday’s attack, which brought to nearly 120 the number of Palestinian suicide bombings in the last four years, was the eighth such attack to have been carried out by a woman.
Counterterrorism experts have speculated that Palestinian terror groups are increasingly using women for their attacks because they raise less suspicion among Israeli security officials.
More than 1,000 Israelis have been killed in the last four years of violence, with nearly half of them murdered in Palestinian suicide bombings.
With its proximity to the West Bank offering a quick getaway for Arab accomplices, Jerusalem’s French Hill intersection has been a frequently targeted spot for bombers, and has seen nearly a dozen attacks in the last four years. Security officials have long said the capital’s northern border is its most porous, and the security barrier going up in the area is meant to address that problem. Last week, the Jerusalem police chief estimated that it will take another year for the barrier around the city to be completed, if there are no further court-imposed delays as the result of Palestinian appeals.
The last major suicide bombing in Israel occurred on August 31, when 16 people were killed in a Hamas double suicide bus bombing in Beersheba.
Wednesday’s bombing broke a seven-month lull in attacks in Jerusalem — with the previous attack was a February 22 bus bombing that killed eight people - and shattered a sense of security that had grown in the capital in the last months.
Security officials attribute the dramatic drop in the bombings both to the security barrier under construction and to ongoing IDF operations in the West Bank against the three major Palestinian terror organizations, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade.
The drop in attacks in the capital over the last year, security officials repeatedly stress, does not result from any decrease in either the planning and desire of these groups to carry out such bombings.
In the last two months alone, police said, about half a dozen bombings have been thwarted in the capital.
Matthew Gutman contributed to this report
In Memoriam
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