At Least 10 Killed in Suicide Bombing of Jerusalem Bus

Elsewhere, for the second day in a row Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian teenager in Tulkarm in the West Bank on Wednesday. The army said that in each case, the boys had been throwing gasoline bombs, but Palestinian witnesses said they were stones.

In scenes reminiscent of the first Palestinian uprising against Israel, a group of boys calling themselves the "Striking Force" has taken to attacking Israeli patrols here with rocks, sometimes raining them down from the roofs on passing jeeps.

Despite an Israeli curfew on Wednesday, dozens of boys, teenagers and young men loitered along the otherwise vacant streets here holding stones and bits of metal and eyeing any approaching vehicle.

Tulkarm came under full Israeli control again last week, after a gunman from the militant Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades infiltrated a kibbutz near here and killed five Israelis, including a mother and her sons, 5 and 4. Israeli officials have said the attacker, who escaped, may have originated here, and local members of the brigades acknowledged a connection to the attack.

At about 9 this morning, Amr Qudsi, 14, was shot dead as he ran away across the roofts after throwing stones, boys who were with him said. A spokeswoman for the Israeli Army said that he threw a gasoline bomb. But youths here denied using such weapons.

"We only had stones," said a 15-year-old who gave his name as Saed. "They're lying." Saed's running shoes were spotted with blood. He said he helped carry his friend to an ambulance after the shooting.

"He was telling me, `Saed, I can't breathe,' " he said. "I moved his clothes and looked at his stomach, and I saw his intestines."

He said the boys had thrown stones from the roof of a two-story building, whose windows were shattered, possibly by the gunfire. A soldier had opened fire from the gasoline station across the street, he said.

The curfew on Wednesday covered not only Tulkarm, but also Hebron, to the south. Israeli forces retook control of Hebron on Friday, after gunmen from the Islamic Jihad killed 12 Israeli soldiers, police officers, and settlers' guards. The Israeli Foreign Ministry at first said that gunmen had killed worshipers on the way home from prayers, but that account was inaccurate. The army spokeswoman said that the army was investigating the incident and planned to publish an account of it soon.

Hebron's settlers seized on the incident to build a new settlement in the area. They have named the settlement Gedudei Giborim, or the "Heroes' Battalions," to commemorate the dead.

Israeli forces have had effective military control of the whole West Bank since June, when Israel began taking back territory ceded under the Oslo accords as a result of a suicide bombing that killed 19 passengers on a Jerusalem bus.

Tulkarm, which sits on the West Bank boundary with Israel, is choked off by heavily defended checkpoints; certain areas are ringed with ditches and barbed wire. It is a stronghold of Yasir Arafat's Fatah faction and the Fatah-linked Al Aksa Martyrs.

On Tuesday, Israeli forces killed five Palestinians here. One of the dead was a wanted man, Tarik Zaghal, 25, a member of the Brigades implicated in several attacks. Palestinians here described two carloads of undercover Israeli commandos' ambushing Mr. Zaghal on his way to break the Ramadan fast.

A night watchman from a nearby apartment building was shot and killed as he went to Mr. Zaghal's aid, Palestinians here said. Two men in a taxicab were also killed. Palestinians said that those men just happened to be driving by, but that the Israeli Army said they tried to run down soldiers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/21/international/middleeast/21BOMB.html?pagewanted=all&position=top