Two Israeli policemen died preventing a female suicide bomber from entering a packed Jerusalem bus shelter on Wednesday, probably saving many other lives.
The 19-year-old Palestinian woman detonated the bomb when the policeman demanded to search a bag the authorities say contained about 5kg of explosive.
PHOTO: NY TIMES
"She threw her head back and then there was an explosion," witness Debbie Segal told Army radio. "A few seconds later, her body burst into flames."
Another witness, Binyamin Miller, said: "I thought there must be many people dead because the explosion seemed so loud and then the screaming started. A lot of people were very, very lucky today."
About 20 people were wounded, including a nine year-old boy.
The Al-Aqsa martyrs brigades named the bomber as Zainab Abu Salem from a Nablus refugee camp.
Jerusalem's police chief, Ilan Franco, said that the policemen had prevented many more deaths inside the bus shelter, where more than 20 people were waiting, or would have occurred had she boarded a rush-hour bus.
"The operation of border police officers today in Jerusalem ... prevented a very big attack," he said.
Israel was braced for an attack to coincide with last week's Jewish new year and Yom Kippur tomorrow. The bombing took place in French Hill, a mostly Jewish suburb of occupied East Jerusalem, which has been a favored target for suicide bombings over the past four years of intifada.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Israel would hit back at the Palestinians with "all force."
"In many cases we prevent heavy disasters. Sometimes things happen like what happened today. But we intend to continue our struggle against terror with all force," he added.
Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski led calls for the speeding up of the construction of the Israel's barrier through the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RSS