palestinian 'targetted assassination' in tel aviv

One killed, at least 20 hurt in south Tel Aviv terror attack

By Roni Singer and Yair Ettinger, Haaretz Correspondents, Haaretz Service and Agencies



A female soldier was killed and at least 30 other people were wounded when a bomb exploded at around 7 A.M. Sunday on Har Zion Street in Tel Aviv, close to the central bus station.




The victim was identified as Sergeant Ma'ayan Nayim, 19, from Bat Yam. She will be laid to rest at the cemetery in Holon at 7 P.M. Sunday evening.

The bombing was the first in Israel since March, when two suicide bombers slipped out of the Gaza Strip and killed 10 Israelis in the southern port of Ashdod.

Five of the wounded sustained moderate-to-serious injuries.

Israel Radio reported that the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades - the armed branch of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement - claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the bombing avenged "assassinations" of two top Brigades commanders and the killings of other Palestinians in IDF incursions in Gaza and the West Bank this year.

Following the attack, police closed off a large section of the street - a main thoroughfare in the city - and scoured the area for additional devices. Several Palestinians in the area who lack authorization to be in Israel were briefly detained.

"I heard a massive explosion and ran to the scene," said Hagit Cohen who lives one street away from the blast. "I thought it was the end of the world."

Shutters on the building adjacent to the blast were torn off and windows in shops, homes and a bus shattered over the sidewalk and street.

Tel Aviv police chief Yossi Sedbon told Army Radio that evidence suggested Palestinian militants planted the device, which went off during morning rush hour.

"This was not a suicide bomber but a device planted next to the bus station in a bunch of weeds," Sedbon told Israel Radio.

A police spokesman said that the device was apparently planted in bushes adjacent to a bus stop, and was detonated as the bus approached.

The spokesman added that the bushes absorbed some of the blast and prevented the tightly-packed metal pieces, designed to maximize the impact of the bomb, from causing greater injury.

It is still unclear how the bomb was detonated.

Some of the passengers aboard the bus, which was on the Tel Aviv-Bat Yam route, were among the wounded.

Eyewitness Shlomi Ben-Amo told Israel Radio, "I was driving to work when I heard the boom. A female soldier flew in the air. There was hysteria and everything flew into the air."

Magen David Adom emergency services said most of the injured were only slightly wounded. Four people have been evacuated to Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, five to the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon and three to the Tel Hashomer Medical Center in Ramat Gan.

According to one of the passengers aboard the bus, 25-year-old Yarden Brihon from Bat Yam, the force of the blast knocked several people to the floor.

"I saw a pregnant woman fall over; she was hurt," added Brihon. "The driver opened the doors and everyone managed to get off the bus. The blast happened a second after we pulled into the bus station."

Deputy Defense Minister Ze'ev Boim said that it was likely that Palestinians who planted the bomb slipped into Israel from the West Bank in places where the separation fence has yet to be constructed.

"Following the World Court decision the attack is not so ironic as it was likely. The attack is proof of what we knew all along, that the high motivation of the Palestinian militants has not diminished," Boim told Army Radio.

The last terror attack in Tel Aviv was in April 2003, when a British Muslim carried out a suicide attack on a beachfront pub, killing three people and wounding dozens. In January last year, 23 people died in a double suicide attack just meters from the location of Sunday's blast.