Jerrold Kessel: Students at bombed school return

CNN Correspondent Jerrold Kessel

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- A day after five Americans and two Israelis were killed in a bombing at Hebrew University, students returned to school on Thursday.

CNN Correspondent Jerrold Kessel reports from the scene of the tragedy.

KESSEL: Here at Hebrew University, the classes have resumed at the international school. The students from around the world [are] here taking Jewish studies and other Middle Eastern studies, the classes resuming despite that attack yesterday -- which killed seven people -- and very much reflecting the nature of the student body that is on campus here at the moment, very much a cosmopolitan international flavor.

And there were seven people killed, two of them Israelis, four of them Americans, five, indeed, with one of American-French dual nationality.

The Americans were identified this morning as: Benjamin Blustein, 25, of Pennsylvania; Marla Bennett, 24, of California; Janis Ruth Coulter, 36, of New York, who was an administrative official of the Hebrew University program based in New York, and the fourth American-French national, David Gritz, 24. The identity of the fifth American-Israeli double citizenship holder has not yet been released pending notification of family.

Some of the students we spoke to today said they were absolutely sure that whoever carried out the bombing -- and Hamas has claimed responsibility -- was deliberately targeting Americans because it is common knowledge that the international student body takes their lunch in that cafeteria every day.

There may have been a pointed direction to strike at Americans, to strike at foreign students to warn them off, to scare them off from coming to Israel.

But it also could have been a random attack, because Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups have carried out attacks in all sectors of Israeli life. It could be just this was a target that they managed to get through.

Many of the students we talked to who are studying in this international program this morning are very, very somber.

One student wanted to know why the bomb, which was hidden in a bag and left inside the cafeteria, was not detected.

Another said she was in New York during the September 11 attacks and after yesterday's bombing her previous experience with terrorist attacks has given her strength against fear.

The Arabic exam finally gets under way, but as the students sit down to take the test, a student rushes out. The first sentence for translation in the exam paper had read, "I went to visit my friend." Several of Mikhail's friends in the summer studies program were among those wounded in Wednesday's attack.

And the Israeli police are saying that the bomb was detonated by a mobile cellular telephone left in a bag, getting a call through, and that's what set off the explosives. And as Israel continues to investigate the nature of this explosion, also consideration of how they can continue a policy to try to curb the bombers completely.

Earlier Thursday, Israeli forces blew up the house of a suicide bomber in the Palestinian neighborhood of Beit Jala, and there are reports of Israel's planning to deport family members of other suicide bombers from their homes in the West Bank to Gaza. But the battles continue to go on, even as the emotions continue to be played out very, very somberly here on the Hebrew University campus.