7 Killed, 17 Hurt in Ambush of Bus by Palestinians
In a brazen daytime ambush today, Palestinians in Israeli Army uniforms set off a roadside bomb near a bus approaching this Jewish settlement, then hurled grenades and raked the vehicle with gunfire, killing seven people and wounding 17 before escaping.

It was the first lethal assault on Israeli civilians in nearly a month, and it came despite curfews enforced by Israel in the seven Palestinian towns it has occupied and surrounded in an effort to avert such attacks.

Three Palestinian militant groups claimed responsibility: the Qassam Brigades, which is the armed wing of the militant group Hamas; the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine; and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, which is linked with Yasir Arafat's Fatah movement.

The mode and location of the West Bank attack were identical to the ambush of a bus near Immanuel in December in which 11 people were killed. Hamas claimed responsibility for that attack.

The Palestinian Authority condemned the assault today, saying that it rejected attacks on civilians, Palestinian or Israeli. Peace and security will come only through "a political solution that ends the occupation," the authority said.

Israeli officials indicated that there would be no large-scale retaliation beyond the continuing military operations in the West Bank. Israeli troops in tanks and armored personnel carriers are patrolling Palestinian cities and searching for suspects, keeping residents confined to their homes with occasional breaks to buy food.

The attack today appeared to have been carefully planned and executed, aimed at a still vulnerable target in an unguarded area a few hundred yards from the gate of this community of 3,500 strictly Orthodox Jews southwest of Nablus.

As an armor-plated bus from Bnei Brak, an Orthodox town near Tel Aviv, lumbered up a winding road to Immanuel, a powerful bomb exploded, riddling the vehicle with shrapnel and blowing out its right tires, police and army officials said.

The gunmen, hiding in a scrub-covered rise by the side of the road, opened fire, closing in on the bus as it came to a stop in a shallow ditch by the side of the road, authorities said. The assailants poured gunfire and hurled grenades through the upper windows of the bus, which were not bulletproof. Passengers took cover on the floor, trapped in the vehicle, whose doors were disabled.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/17/international/middleeast/17MIDE.html