BEERSHEBA, Israel, Aug. 31 (UPI) -- Two Palestinian suicide bombers Tuesday blew themselves up in busses in the southern Israeli town of Beersheba killing 16 people.
More than 100 others, including a young boy, were wounded in the attack, the Soroka Hospital's Deputy Director-General Arnon Wiznitzer told United Press International.
The attack came several hours after an alert female soldier suspected a Palestinian worker of trying to enter the Erez industrial zone in the northern Gaza Strip with a bomb hidden near his groin. Soldiers and border policemen made him remove the bomb and took him in for an interrogation. A military source declined to divulge details about the bomber as long as the questioning continued.
Hamas assumed responsibility for the twin bus bombings. In a leaflet, Hamas said the attacks were "a response" to Israel's killing of its founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin and his successor Abdel Aziz Rantisi as well as "a present" to Palestinian prisoners engaged in a 2-week-old hunger strike.
The bombers were identified as Ahmed al-Kawasme, 26, and Nazim al-Jaabari, 20, both of Hebron, the Haaretz newspaper reported.
Police Inspector General Moshe Karadi said he believed the two boarded the buses in the same station and at the same time.
The first bomber detonated his charge on a No. 6 bus killing eight people, said Zelig Feiner, spokesman for the Zaka ultra-orthodox volunteers who evacuated the dead.
Police spokesman Gil Kleiman said the bus was strewn with potatoes, vegetables and other goods people apparently bought in the market. The bomb was so powerful that nothing remained of the bomber, Fire Department spokesman Moshe Mosko said.
The second bus, on route 12, was standing on a parallel lane when the first bomb exploded.
Driver Yaakov Cohen told reporters he realized, "It's surely a terrorist."
"Ya-Allah (God), I'll escape from here," he recalled saying to himself.
With passengers screaming hysterically, he stepped on the gas, crossed a junction and some 50 meters from the first bus stopped, opened the doors.
Passengers were dashing out when the second bomber detonated his charge and killed six people behind Cohen.
Mosco said only the bomber's head remained. The blast pushed some people against the sides of the bus. Bodies were handed through the windows, Feiner reported.
There were small fires that blackened the busses but Mosco said they were extinguished quickly.
Leonid Massover, 21, of Beersheba, told UPI he was already outside the second bus but still near it when the second bomb exploded. Flying glass injured his head, his cheek under his eye and his hand. Blood seeped through his bandage as his family converged at his hospital bed.
Another survivor, Nissim Vaaknin, told Channel 2 TV that when he had boarded the bus there was only one available seat, behind the driver near the person who turned out to be the bomber. Vaaknin said he suspected nothing.
A woman boarded the bus carrying shopping so he gave her his seat and moved to the back of the bus.
After the explosion, on his way out through the front door, "I saw the woman, dead, and beside her the terrorist," he said.
The attack was the first suicide bombing since March when two bombers who entered Israel from the Gaza Strip in a container's secret compartment, blew themselves up in the port of Ashdod killing 10 people.
Attempted attacks continued. For foiling the other attacks, the government credits enhanced intelligence and the controversial security barrier Israel has been building in and around the West Bank.
The barrier has been completed around the northern and northwestern West Bank. Militants who wanted to bomb Haifa several weeks ago headed for Jerusalem first, but they detonated their bomb at the Kalandia Crossing when they noticed the extensive police searches.
Work on other sectors up to Jerusalem have been underway, however, the High Court of Justice forced the government to consider the Palestinians' welfare and directed it to bring the barrier closer to the pre-1967 war lines.
That left the southern West Bank open to incursions. It takes 20 minutes to half an hour to reach Beersheba from that area.
Attacks in the southern area have increased somewhat. Two gunmen killed two soldiers and wounded 20 outside the Southern Command headquarters in Beersheba. Policemen killed the two.
There have been demands to hurry up and build a southern extension too.
"Where there is a fence there is no terror. Where there is no fence, there is terror," Public Security Minister Zahi Hanegi noted after the attack.
The government intends to continue building the barrier along with preparations for a pullback from the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank.
"Israel shall continue fighting terror with full determination (but) this has no connection with the separation plan," Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told Channel 2 TV.
Tuesday's attack took place shortly after Sharon informed his Likud Knesset faction of his new timetable for the pullback.
Sharon said the Cabinet would receive a proposal for the evacuation and compensation of the settlers by Sept. 26. The Cabinet is expected to approve it by Oct. 24 so is can be presented to the Knesset for the first of three readings by Nov. 3.
The army is to present its plan within 30 days, Sharon said.
An Israeli radio political commentator said that Sharon was advancing the confrontation with his hard-liner opponents from March 2005 to November 2004.
On Beersheba's main road, a short walk from the Soroka Hospital and Ben Gurion University, fire fighters sawed off the side of the first bus so that it would be easier to evacuate the dead.
Zaka volunteers lined up the dead in white body bags then wheeled them over to waiting ambulances. Another Zaka volunteer was cleaning a red car parked some 50 meters away smeared with pieces of flesh, blood stains and shattered glass.
Perplexed residents watched silently.
"We've lost patience for this. Only God knows when it will end," said Yuri Chigrinsky, 38. "I don't feel there is a future for our children here," added his wife, Julia, 36. Both had emigrated from southern Siberia six years ago.
Several teenagers sat silently in at the Soroka Hospital's entrance hall worried about their friend Alex Visokovski, 14, who was wounded.
Dimitri Trubniakov said that he and his friend were on their way home from classes and his friend boarded the bus.
After the explosion, Visokovski went home, took a shower but suffered burns and a headache. His ears felt also plugged so he went to the hospital and his friends rushed there as well.
Seven other people were in serious condition, Wiznitzer reported. One of the women who succumbed to her wounds died on the operating table, he said.
