Bus stop grenades injure 64 in Israel

Peace talks: Israeli delegation puts chance of deal in doubt after lone Palestinian wounds passengers at Beersheba

A PALESTINIAN man threw two hand grenades at passengers in a bus station in Beersheba in southern Israel yesterday, wounding 64 of them.

The attack came at a critical moment during the Israeli-Palestinian summit meeting with President Bill Clinton in Maryland, which was expected to end today.

Two of the injured were in a serious condition after the explosions and a Palestinian man from near Hebron was under arrest. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, said he would not sign an agreement with the Palestinians unless they did more to prevent such attacks.

The grenades were thrown just before 8am as commuters were waiting for buses at Beersheba, 50 miles south of Jerusalem. The first grenade landed close to a queue of soldiers waiting at a bus stop, injuring 25 of them.

Donna Cohen, a 20-year-old soldier, said later: "I heard a big explosion and I fell to the ground. I couldn't feel my legs. I thought they had been severed." She had been hit by shrapnel, but her legs were not amputated.

A second grenade fell near civilians standing at a second bus stop. Avner, a bus driver, said: "I saw someone lift his arm. He threw something and ran towards my bus. He bumped into it and fell. I jumped on him to catch him. He did not react. He closed his eyes as if he was dead."

Later the police said the man claimed he had acted alone, but they were looking for a second Palestinian who had dropped him from a car.

If the attack was carried out by Hamas, the Islamic movement opposed to the peace process, then it may indicate that the organisation no longer has the resources to carry out suicide bombings because a number of its senior West Bank military leaders have been killed this year.

In an attack last week one young Israeli man was shot dead and another seriously wounded as they swam in a freshwater pool near Jerus-alem. In other incidents an Israeli policewoman was knifed to death near Jericho, while a Palestinian-Jordanian student was killed by a rubber-covered steel bullet fired by an Israeli soldier in a riot in Hebron.

Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the leader of Hamas, did not directly claim responsibility for the Beersheba attack yesterday, saying only that "what happened this morning is part of our continued resistance to the occupation of our land".

The Palestinian Authority said the grenade throwing hurt the Palestinians because it gives Israel a chance to delay the withdrawal of its troops from the West Bank. The timing of the attack looks as if it was geared to prevent any agreement at the summit at the Wye Plantation in Maryland.

It is the first time bombs have been thrown in Beersheba. Previously Hamas has made most of its suicide bomb attacks on the centres of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The use of grenades makes it unlikely that the attacker was acting on his own, since they are not widely available. By yesterday evening 24 of the injured were still in hospital, of whom only five had suffered moderate to serious shrapnel wounds.

Meanwhile, the Israeli press is reporting that the United States has told Israeli officials that King Hussein of Jordan is terminally ill and that he will not, in any case, resume his position as fully functioning monarch. King Hussein is receiving chemotherapy at the Mayo clinic in Minnesota for cancer of the lymph glands.

The Jordanian government is denying that the king's illness is terminal. While he is receiving medical treatment his brother, Crown Prince Hassan, acts as regent and rules in his stead.