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One Killed, Nine Wounded In Arab Taxi Blast In Northern Israel
ME AMMI JUNCTION, Israel, Mar 1 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - One person was killed and nine injured Thursday when a taxi police said was carrying a Palestinian on his way to commit an attack blew up near an Arab town in northern Israel.
Police sources said the suspected bomber, whose legs were blown off by explosives he was carrying in the service taxi, had laid another bomb in Tel Aviv, sending authorities on a mad dash to find it.
Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh laid the blame on Palestinians.
"I am not surprised, because for a long time we have had information on attempts, particularly by the [Palestinian groups] Islamic Jihad and Hamas, to enter Israel with car bombs," Sneh told Israeli television.
"What happened today was the realization of our fears," he said.
Besides killing one person and wounding the alleged bomber, the blast at the Me Ammi road junction near the Arab town of Umm el-Fahm seriously wounded two other passengers and injured six bystanders and a police dog.
There was no information about the dead person.
The blast snapped the white Mercedes' roof up like a tin can and its windows were blown out. Ambulances were seen rushing to the scene of the blast, with police clearing the area for fear of another explosion.
The other passengers of the collective taxi were not believed to be involved in the attack, said Alik Ron, police chief for the northern region.
Ron said police had been following the taxi northeast from Tel Aviv and stopped it at a junction about three kilometers (two miles) west of Umm el-Fahm, a stronghold of Arab Israelis.
There were conflicting reports of the moments leading up to the explosion, with one police official telling CNN the blast came as the van passed through an intersection and another saying it came at the end of a high-speed chase.
That official said the van had been stopped at a police roadblock and sped away with police in pursuit. The explosion came when the van was stopped at another checkpoint, CNN reports.
Witnesses said the passengers included at least one Palestinian, an Israeli Arab and an Israeli Jew.
A Jewish woman told public radio the blast occurred when a police officer stopped the car and asked for the passengers' identity cards.
"I heard a big explosion and I jumped out of the window," said the 27-year-old pregnant woman.
She said one of the passengers sitting in a back seat was an Arab, "who was speaking quite a lot on his mobile phone," a frequently used device to detonate bombs.
Another witness said police had been following the northbound taxi for some time after noticing suspicious behavior from one of the passengers.
Police and paramedics say a number of the injured are in a serious condition. Most of the injured were in the vehicle, according to reports by BBC.
Police said the suspect bomber had told them under interrogation in hospital that he had planted a bomb in Tel Aviv that was discovered and detonated by Israeli police on Wednesday, and another in the same city, sparking a massive hunt.
"This type of bomb could have caused a significant number of casualties," police commander Uri Bar Lev said of Wednesday's thwarted attack in which a briefcase packed with around two kilos (four pounds) of explosives was left at a fast-food stand.
Investigators had said the bomb, discovered after a customer raised the alarm, had likely been left by a Palestinian.
Sneh said an increasing number of attacks had been reported in Israel, which he called "a phenomenon that must be fought with classic anti-guerrilla, anti-terrorist means."
He called for a crackdown on hard line officials "and, if possible, their arrest."
Reuven Rivlin, parliamentary whip of Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon's Likud party, added, "if the Palestinian Authority and [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat continue to use terrorism to put pressure on Israel, we are going to start launching more serious military actions to put an end to them."
Israeli leaders frequently accuse the Palestinian leadership of orchestrating anti-Israeli violence, allegations Palestinians deny.
The cause of the explosion was not immediately clear, though radio stations speculated that the explosives were intended to go off later, in a crowded location, MSNBC reports.
In five months of violence, more than 411 people have been killed, including 339 Palestinians, 57 Israeli Jews and 15 others. Car bombings inside Israel have claimed several of those lives, it adds.
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