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Jerrold Kessel: Anguish, anger at scene of bus bombing
JERUSALEM (CNN) -- A Palestinian suicide bomber killed at least 11 people and wounded at least 50 others Thursday on a crowded bus in Jerusalem -- the first terror attack in the city in more than three months. Many schoolchildren were among the victims. In a broadcast on Hezbollah's al-Manar television, the radical Islamic group Hamas claimed responsibility for the blast. CNN correspondent Jerrold Kessel, reporting from Jerusalem, spoke Thursday with CNN anchor Paula Zahn about the bombing. ZAHN: Jerrold, how bad is it? KESSEL: Bad, Paula. It was a bad incident -- 7:20 in the morning, a packed bus from this low-income neighborhood heading off into the city (with) people going to work, many teenagers heading to high school. And many of them were among the casualties -- 11 dead and some 50 wounded in this attack. Israeli police are saying (the bomber) was a 26-year-old Palestinian man from the town of Bethlehem. That's just about five miles away across the hills in the West Bank. And the explosion that rocked the houses, the tenement buildings in the neighborhood was so powerful that it almost knocked people out of their beds. That was the testimony given to us by 67-year-old Simcha Cohen, who came down shortly afterwards to look at the horror on the scene. And we spoke to her, and I asked her if she really believed that these bombings would ever end. She said, "I pray every day, every night -- every single day I say, 'God, put in our hearts the love, start to love each other.'" A cry of anguish there, really, and there is a good deal of anguish, also anger, here on the scene as things get back as best as they can to normal. The Number 20 bus has been running again behind me periodically, coming past the same bus station where that suicide bomber blew up the earlier bus. People have been lighting candles, saying prayers, and along with that, a good deal of pain remaining here at this latest terror attack in an Israeli city. ZAHN: Now that Israeli police have identified this bomber, what are they telling you about this kid? KESSEL: Well, it's a very interesting thing. They have identified him. They have given his name. They say he's from Bethlehem, although we have sources (who) say that he has resided in Bethlehem only (a short) while. Before that, he came from a village further south in the West Bank. But they did say that he was not known to the Israeli Security Forces in any way of (having) any affiliation to a Palestinian group. The Israelis will continue, as they say, their battles against all of the Palestinian groups (that) keep on trying to strike in Israeli cities.
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