Posted on 06/05/2002 4:19:31 PM PDT by knighthawk
The bus had left Tel Aviv bound for the town of Tiberias at 0550 local time (0250GMT) - most of its passengers were soldiers returning to their bases. About 90 minutes later, when it was near the Meggido junction, the bus was reduced to scrap after a car packed with explosives was detonated next to it.
I saw a vehicle just in front of us. Then I heard the explosion and everything was fire and smoke," soldier Anton Borodnik said speaking in hospital.
"I kicked the door open with another soldier. I pulled my girlfriend off and then went back and pulled my mother off and then went back and pulled my aunt off."
Another soldier, Sharon Levinger, who was sitting in the front of the bus said: "I saw a car passing and then there was an explosion. The bus turned over at least twice."
Others were not so lucky - at least 16 passengers were killed in the blast.
Trapped alive
Andre, a soldier guarding the Megiddo Prison (in what was once the biblical city of Armageddon) saw the bus fly through the air.
"People were escaping from it like ants," he told Israeli Army Radio.
"I saw a female soldier who was sitting on the edge of the road and couldn't move.
"Everyone was screaming at her to get away from the bus... then a soldier picked her up and as she turned around we saw that her face was completely bloody and she couldn't see and that's why she hadn't moved."
Witnesses described scenes of carnage at the junction, with passengers trapped alive in the burning bus.
A man and woman burned to death as they embraced, a local radio reporter said.
Survivor
The bus was still burning an hour after the explosion, hampering efforts to rescue the wounded.
"We couldn't get onto the bus," said Ogen Drori, a paramedic who was in a nearby car when the blast ripped through the bus.
"The explosion was huge. The people were thrown off the bus by the force of the explosion."
Driver Mickey Harel said he "felt the bus leap and turn over".
"I saw soldiers thrown around the front of the bus," said Mr Harel after surviving what he said was the fourth attack in recent months.
Megiddo junction has seen a number of terror attacks in the past. Last month a suicide bomber tried to blow himself up at the junction, but his bomb only partially exploded and no one was injured.
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Despite being among the injured in Wednesday's bus attack in northern Israel, bus driver Mickey Harel can count himself lucky - this was the fourth time he had been at or near a bombing in the last year.
He set off as usual on Wednesday morning from the central bus station in Tel Aviv on his daily route to Tiberias in the north.
Several soldiers got on board at stops along the way.
His bus blew up just as it reached the Megiddo intersection of the Nahal Iron (Wadi Ara) Highway outside Afula.
"Before I got to the Megiddo jail where there is usually a roadblock, I started to slow down but this time the roadblock wasn't there," Mr Harel said.
"All of a sudden there was a big explosion," he told the BBC.
"I clung to the wheel then I managed to get out the window."
He said the windscreen disintegrated and was blown outwards as fire rapidly engulfed the vehicle.
Daily journey
"I realised immediately that it was a terror attack, either inside or alongside the bus," he said.
"I jumped out and saw soldiers [on the ground] near the bus and the bus itself started to burn."
According to him and several passengers who survived, the bus was blown to the left and the right overturned and then righted itself on its wheels before sliding into a ditch almost directly beneath the walls of the Megiddo jail.
"Together with another person we started to drag the soldiers to the middle of the road. I also tried to get near the site of the bus, but the flames prevented me," he said.
This is just the latest in a series of near-misses.
In October, while Mr Harel was off-duty, a Palestinian gunmen dressed as an Israeli soldier fired into the bus he normally drives, killing three people standing nearby.
A month later, Mr Harel said he drove just 50 meters behind a bus which was ripped apart by a suicide bomber near the Arab town of Umm el-Fahm.
And last month a suicide bomber blew himself up on the side of the road, as Mr Harel was driving past. No others were killed.
Harel survived his fourth attack in as many months
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