Children killed in Israel suicide bomb

There were children's voices coming from the wreckage of the bus yesterday.

There were children's voices coming from the wreckage of the bus yesterday. As witnesses to the latest suicide bombing in Israel, in which 11 people died, rushed to the charred remains on Mexico Street, they heard the young crying for their mothers.

And there were children among the dead, four of them. An eight-year-old boy, Ilan Friedman, was on the bus with his grandmother, 67. Both were killed. Two children aged 13 died. So did Michael Sharansky, 16, and his mother. Half of the 49 people wounded were younger than 18, hospital officials said.

There were schoolbooks lying in the road beside the remains of the bus, as well as sandwiches the children were taking to school. This was the bus you would target if you wanted to kill children. Bus number 20 calls at four schools on its route.

And the time the suicide bomber struck was the time you would choose if you wanted to kill children: 7.15am local time, when they were on their way to school.

One of the young passengers was Maor Kimche, 15. "I was sitting at the back of the bus," he said from a hospital bed yesterday. "We were picking people up for about 10 minutes in the neighbourhood. Suddenly there was a very powerful explosion. Everything went black, lots of smoke." And then he said it – what he saw inside that bus full of children on their way to school. "People were burning," he said. "Their faces were red, yellow, white. I don't know how to explain it."

Another of the children on the bus was Hodaya Asaraf, 13. They buried her yesterday. They put a velvet cloth decorated with the Star of David over her at the funeral, but you could still see how terribly small she was.

The Israeli police said they believed the suicide bomber got on to bus number 20 a stop or two before he detonated an explosive belt strapped around him. They said they believed he may have waited for passengers to get on at a few more stops, until the bus was full.

Two militant Palestinian Islamist groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, claimed responsibility for the bombing. The atrocity was a message, a clear attack on any hope for a peace process.

Two weeks ago, Yasser Arafat's Fatah organisation sent delegates to try to persuade Hamas to call off attacks on civilians inside Israel – at least until after January's Israeli elections, so that violence would not help the election campaigns of hardliners such as the Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon. Hamas gave its answer yesterday.

Last night, the Palestinians of Bethlehem were nervously expecting to bear the brunt of Israel's response after Mr Sharon ordered a "wide and extensive" military operation. The suicide bomber was identified as a 23-year-old from Bethlehem, Nael Abu Hilail.

Bethlehem is the only West Bank city the Israeli army had withdrawn from for any length of time since it re-occupied the area in June. Last night, its residents were expecting the soldiers back.