Woman Detonates Explosives in Israel

Posted 8:52AM on Monday 28th January 2002 ( 23 years ago )

Israeli police were hesitant to call her a suicide bomber, saying it wasn't clear if the woman intended to kill herself or if the bomb exploded prematurely as she walked along Jaffa Street, the main commercial strip in west Jerusalem. On Monday, meanwhile, a Palestinian was shot dead in the Ramat-Gan suburb of Tel Aviv after running down and injuring an Israeli policeman,officials said. Three civilians were hospitalized from shock, ambulance officials said. Israeli officials believe the same man earlier ran a car through an army roadblock outside the West Bank city of Qalqilya, moderately injuring a soldier. In Lebanon, the Al-Manar television station run by the militant Hezbollah movement said the Jerusalem bomber was Shinaz Amuri, a female student at Al-Najah University in the West Bank town of Nablus. Israel accused Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat of "encouraging terrorism" and said it was prepared to respond to the bombing - the third major attack in an Israeli city in a week. The blast next to a shoe shop blew out shop windows, set a store on fire and left victims sprawled on the pavement amid shards of glass, pieces of fruit, shoes and storefront mannequins. "It sounded like half the street exploded," said Hama Gidon, a clothing store worker who was slightly injured. "All the mannequins went flying and I did too. People were falling, glass was flying everywhere." More than 100 people were treated on the spot or taken to hospitals, though most suffered only from shock. Three people were seriously hurt and nine had moderate injuries, officials said. Mark Sokolow, a U.S. citizen from Woodmere, N.Y., who survived the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, was slightly hurt in Sunday's explosion along with his wife and two daughters. "I heard a loud whoosh, like a bang, and I kind of saw things flying around a little bit, and then I realized I was able to get up and walk around," Sokolow told Israeli television. Sokolow said he was on the 38th floor of the World Trade Center's south tower on Sept. 11 when a hijacked airliner hit the north tower. His office was evacuated and he escaped before the south tower was hit. Up until now, only the radical Islamic Jihad and Hamas have sent suicide bombers into Israel, but Islamic law forbids women from committing suicide for any cause. Therefore, Israeli security sources, quoted anonymously in the Maariv daily, said they suspected the bomber might have come from a secular movement. The paper said Israeli security is rethinking its profile of potential suicide bombers. Until recently, most were young, single, uneducated Palestinians. "Lately we are seeing older, married men and now a woman," the paper wrote. Palestinian women have taken a larger part in public life in the West Bank and Gaza than in some other Muslim societies, but they have gradually receded into the background during the current conflict as men have taken the roles of military commanders. Only one woman serves in the Palestinian Cabinet - Intissar al-Wazir, widow of the legendary Palestinian fighter Abu Jihad, killed in a 1988 raid in Tunis, Tunisia, widely attributed to the Israeli secret service. No group immediately claimed responsibility for Sunday's attack, but Israel said it held Arafat ultimately responsible. Arafat is "encouraging terrorism, he's sending (attackers) to Jerusalem," said Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "We will continue to systematically dismantle the terrorist infrastructure." The Palestinian leadership, meanwhile, "strongly condemned the suicide attack" and called on President Bush to send Mideast envoy Anthony Zinni back to the region. However, Bush has been sharply critical of Arafat, and Vice President Dick Cheney suggested on "Fox News Sunday" that Zinni will not return soon. "At this stage, we need to see some positive signs that his return would do some good. And that means we've got to see some positive results out of Arafat," Cheney said. Arafat must "make a 100 percent good-faith effort to put an end to terrorism," he said. "So far he hasn't done that." The Palestinian leadership on Saturday called for a halt to all attacks against Israel. However, several Palestinian groups have said recently that they would no longer observe a cease-fire declared by Arafat in December. Israel has dismissed the Palestinian cease-fire calls as meaningless and says Arafat has simultaneously been encouraging militants. In a speech Saturday, Arafat said Palestinians were "facing a military crisis, but despite all this, no one has complained of the suffering. They have said, 'God is great, and jihad, jihad, jihad.'" "Jihad" is an Arabic word that can be translated as "resistance," "struggle," or "holy war," and the context was not clear in Arafat's statement. Just south of Jerusalem on Sunday, an angry Palestinian crowd stormed a prison in Bethlehem and freed seven prisoners belonging to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the two groups that have carried out past suicide bombings, Palestinian security officials said. Palestinian security officers did not want to use force with the crowd and did not try to stop them, a Palestinian security official said. Jaffa Street is a Jerusalem landmark lined with shops, and the narrow sidewalks are clogged with pedestrians, particularly in the middle of the day. The streets were full Sunday, the first day of Israel's work week. The attack came two days after a Palestinian suicide bomber killed himself and wounded 24 people in a pedestrian mall in Tel Aviv. That bombing followed Israel's killing of a senior Islamic militant in a targeted missile strike in the Gaza Strip. On Tuesday, a Palestinian gunman opened fire with an automatic rifle on Jaffa Street only a few yards from the site of Sunday's attack. The gunman killed two women and injured more than a dozen people before he was shot dead by police. Some shops had their windows shot out Tuesday and had just replaced the glass when it was shattered again.

http://accesswdun.com/article/2002/1/203216