Shortly after 9:00pm last night (Tuesday), a 29-year-old Moslem religious leader - imam - and teacher from Hevron boarded a public bus making its way from the Western Wall to the Geulah and Har Nof neighborhoods in Jerusalem - and blew it up.
After quickly making his way to the section connecting the two parts of the heavily crowded accordion bus, as it passed through the Shmuel HaNavi neighborhood adjacent to Meah She'arim, Raad Abd el-Hamid Misek detonated a large explosive device that he carried on his body. The #2 bus was ripped apart and set aflame. Twenty people were murdered and more than 130 were injured as a result of the suicide bombing. Among the dead and wounded are many children.
ZAKA emergency services head Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, among the first people on the scene, said that he picked his way through the bodies, checking which of them had a pulse, until he found a baby that he estimated at three months old, "crying, but whole." He and other eyewitnesses said they had rarely, if ever, seen such a horrendous attack.
Aside from the ZAKA rescue vehicles, Magen David Adom officials reported that 50 ambulances operated at the scene of the suicide bombing. MDA emergency medical technicians and paramedics treated 136 blast victims. In response to the attack in the capital, 250 units of blood were transferred from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by MDA blood bank officials.
The Islamic Jihad initially claimed, through the Hizbullah television station in Lebanon, that its members had perpetrated the attack, saying it was in retaliation for the killing of a terrorist in Hevron a few days earlier. Hamas, not wanting to be deprived of “credit”, claimed its own share of responsibility shortly afterwards.
After quickly making his way to the section connecting the two parts of the heavily crowded accordion bus, as it passed through the Shmuel HaNavi neighborhood adjacent to Meah She'arim, Raad Abd el-Hamid Misek detonated a large explosive device that he carried on his body. The #2 bus was ripped apart and set aflame. Twenty people were murdered and more than 130 were injured as a result of the suicide bombing. Among the dead and wounded are many children.
ZAKA emergency services head Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, among the first people on the scene, said that he picked his way through the bodies, checking which of them had a pulse, until he found a baby that he estimated at three months old, "crying, but whole." He and other eyewitnesses said they had rarely, if ever, seen such a horrendous attack.
Aside from the ZAKA rescue vehicles, Magen David Adom officials reported that 50 ambulances operated at the scene of the suicide bombing. MDA emergency medical technicians and paramedics treated 136 blast victims. In response to the attack in the capital, 250 units of blood were transferred from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by MDA blood bank officials.
The Islamic Jihad initially claimed, through the Hizbullah television station in Lebanon, that its members had perpetrated the attack, saying it was in retaliation for the killing of a terrorist in Hevron a few days earlier. Hamas, not wanting to be deprived of “credit”, claimed its own share of responsibility shortly afterwards.
