Suicide Bomb Kills nine on Israeli Commuter Bus
A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said that as a result, Israel had suspended planned talks this week with Palestinian officials on security and easing hardships in West Bank cities under curfew.

The powerful blast on a Galilee country road tore through the bus crowded with civilians and soldiers returning to base in the morning rush hour at the start of the Israeli working week.

``I went to the door to get off and just then there was an explosion. I felt a ball of fire in the face and parts of people flew by,'' Boaz Altshuler, who was wounded, told Israeli TV.

Witnesses and rescue workers said the inferno blazed for 10 minutes before firefighters arrived. Bits of clothing, army uniforms and bags littered the ground.

In a statement issued in Gaza, the militant group Hamas said it had carried out the bombing in further revenge for an Israeli air raid on July 22 that killed its military commander Salah Shehada, his deputy and 13 other Palestinians.

The Palestinian Authority condemned the bus attack, but said in a statement that Israel's policy of ``mass detentions, repressive measures and home demolitions'' was responsible for the cycle of violence.

The bombing flew in the face of increased military action in the West Bank which Israel said to deter future attacks.

NINE HOMES RAZED

This included razing nine homes of relatives of Palestinian suicide bombers and gunmen. Palestinian President Yasser Arafat has called for international intervention to stop demolitions
Outside the Damascus Gate to East Jerusalem's Old City, police exchanged fire with a 19-year-old Palestinian who shot dead an Israeli in a telephone company truck. The gunman and a Palestinian passerby were killed, police said.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military group linked to Arafat's Fatah faction, claimed responsibility for the attack, the al-Manar television station reported in Beirut.

A military appeals committee reconvened Sunday to decide whether to deport two Palestinians, brothers of wanted militants, from the West Bank to the fenced-in Gaza Strip.

Israel's attorney-general has given the army the green light to exile to Gaza relatives of militants, on condition it can prove the family members had a link to attacks.

In the West Bank, the Israeli army has been going house-to-house in search of explosives and suspected suicide bombers and their handlers in the Casbah, or Old City, of Nablus. It said three soldiers were wounded by an explosive device during the operation Sunday, one of them moderately.

At least 1,479 Palestinians and 583 Israelis have been killed since a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation began in September 2000 after peace talks froze.
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