Crying children with tattered clothes, blood-smeared faces

Jerusalem Post ^ | Aug. 20, 2003 | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

[yonif]

Strollers were scattered near the stricken bus, medics carried away children with blood-smeared faces and a baby girl died in a hospital before doctors could find her parents.

At least five children were among the 18 dead in Tuesday's suicide bombing by a Palestinian militant who blew himself up on a Jerusalem bus. Forty children were among more than 100 people injured.

The attack was the 100th Palestinian suicide bombing against Israelis since the latest round of fighting began in September 2000. The youth of the victims stands out in that grim list, and the government said the choice of target was particularly cold-blooded.

"You have to remember the target of the attack, a moving bus bringing families who had been praying at the Western Wall," said Dore Gold, a spokesman for the Israeli government.

"It is important for people to understand that the children who died and were injured were specifically targeted by the suicide bomber who saw them," Gold said.

The Islamic militant group Hamas identified the attacker as Raed Mesk, a 29-year-old mosque preacher and father of two young children, ages two and three, from the West Bank city of Hebron.

On Tuesday evening, he boarded the double-length No. 2 bus, which had started out at the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest shrine, and was headed to an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Har Nof. The bomber struck as the bus drove along a major thoroughfare in central Jerusalem.

Several crying children with tattered clothes and blood-smeared faces were led away from the scene. One paramedic cradled a little girl in his arms, while television pictures showed doctors leaning over a bloodied infant in an ambulance.

Shlomi Arush, a 19-year-old Israeli who was about 30 yards from the bus when the bomb went off, said many children were left lying on the ground while others fled the scene.

"One boy ran up to a man getting a heart massage. I assume it was his father," Arush said.

Witnesses said the blast blew out the windows of a second bus traveling in front of the bombed vehicle, injuring at least two girls. Another report said that among the passengers were members of a family who had celebrated a Bar Mitzvah, the Jewish rite of passage into adulthood for boys, at the wall.

"About half of the 41 injured who came to our hospital were children," Professor Yonatan Levy, director of the Shaarei Tzedek hospital, told Channel One television.

He said the two most seriously injured were a girl with a head injury and an 8-month-old baby girl on a respirator whose parents could not be found. Israel Army Radio said the baby later died.

"There are at least two families where three family members were injured, mostly lightly, and they are lying next to each other in the emergency room," he said.

[yonif]

"You have to remember the target of the attack, a moving bus bringing families who had been praying at the Western Wall," said Dore Gold, a spokesman for the Israeli government.

[Blood of Tyrants]

I pray that Sharon will finish what Joshua failed to do.

[AZamericonnie]

The pictures of these injured children sickens me & makes me cry. Regardless of the amount of indoctrination these people have received it seems at some gutteral human level you would have to know this is wrong. The killing must stop.

[Lijahsbubbe]

Shmuel Tabenfeld, 5 months, of New Square, New York was killed along with his mother Goldie Tabenfeld in a suicide bombing of a bus returning from the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Tuesday August 19, 2003. (AP Photo/Handout Photo From Family)

[baltodog]

I don't know if anyone will agree with me on this, but I was thinking....
These murders aren't about about an oppressed people wanting freedom. This isn't about one religion fighting with another. In fact, these murders aren't anything but gratification for someones' bloodlust.
It's like the IRA...when I was younger, I followed what they did and verbally supported them in arguments. I read and studied everything about them that I could, and then it hit me....these people are nothing but a bunch of thugs that like to hurt others. I don't even think this is about hate...I think that the people that orchestrate this stuff just simply like to see others get hurt.
These people -- Hammas, PLO, KKK, IRA, Black Panthers, Weather Underground, etc -- all of them are nothing but a bunch of bad seeds.
I'm starting to lean towards supporting just sending our troops into Israel to unabashedly kick ass with no questions asked.
I truely fear that if there is another bloody attack on our soil, we are going to witness anarchy and killing in the streets.

[StarCMC]

I'm starting to lean towards supporting just sending our troops into Israel to unabashedly kick ass with no questions asked.

I would second that motion!

BTW - love your username. Long story, short -- we took a trip to New York and HAD to find the statue of Balto in Central Park before we left.

[baltodog]

We adopted a Sheppard-Mix from the pound right after my kids saw the movie.
All the other ideas I had for usernames were taken.

[saquin]

And from the "religion of peace", the response to slaughtered Jewish babies was this:

"Fireworks burst over Hebron tonight as Palestinians there celebrated the bombing."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/20/international/middleeast/20MIDE.html

[rogue yam]

I am against sending American troops. This is the Israelis' job to do and they should just do it. That said, I think the Israelis should sit down among themselves and draw out on a map what piece of land they would be prepared to settle for over the long run. Then they should withdraw completely to that land, expell all non-citizen Arabs from their land, and inform all Arab-Israeli citizens that the punishment for terrorism is destruction of their family homes and permanent expulsion from Israel of their entire families. Then the Israelis should declare a two-year moratorium on travel into Israel by any Arabs for any reason. Then the Israelis should call up all of their men, assemble a mighty force, and go through all of the West Bank and Gaza like a fine-toothed comb. They should capture or kill every single terrorist, destroy the entire terrorist infrastructure, kill Arafat, and then withdraw completely to that land which they claim for themselves and say to the world: 1) This land is ours. Anyone who attacks us on our land will face our complete and unmitigated wrath. 2) The "palestinians" are no longer our concern. Whine and cry over them as much as you want. Throw as much money down that rathole as you want. We will never speak to them or even speak of them ever again. But we will watch them and all of the other Arabs. And anyone who prepares to attack us will be smitten in a big big way. Back all this up without flinching for two years and then ask the "palestinians" if a few of them might want day permits to come in for work or trade. Re-establish ties slowly and gradually based on mutual benefit on an individual basis. All other issues (water, property, etc.) settle by unilateral, non-negotiable decree. When the commies and U.N. jackals complain just say "You all had your chance. You didn't get the job done. We won 5 or 6 wars in a row. We got tired of waiting and suffering. This is the way it's going to be. Now run along, you're bothering us."

[FITZ]

You have to remember the target of the attack, a moving bus bringing families who had been praying at the Western Wall,"

Further proof that Arabs, Jews & Christians do not share the same God. What kind of barbarians would slaughter people who are praying? Obviously not those who believe in the God of Abraham but of some evil allah type god.

[Monty22]

Israel should lob some nuclear bombs at saudi for this. Seriously. I'm so damn sick and tired of the islamic violence. It's damn near time for civil unrest against it in the USA, must less over there.

[netmilsmom]

The actual dog is stuffed and at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

[StarCMC]

I am against sending American troops. This is the Israelis' job to do and they should just do it.

I agree, but I think the world needs to get out of the way and let them do it. Would you still not support sending Am. troops if, say, France and Russia hopped into bed with the Israelis and helped them? Would you support supplying the Israeli's with weapons? Just curious...I'm really thinking about this issue...

[StarCMC]

That's on our list of things to do someday!

[MEGoody]

Seems that the Pali terrorists have publically announced that they consider women and children to be enemy combatants. So why do they cry foul when one of theirs gets killed?

[MEGoody]

Sounds good to me.

[r9etb]

these people are nothing but a bunch of thugs that like to hurt others.

Every time I see a clip of shouting, arm-waving, Islamic males, I think the same thing. God help me, I can't stop wishing somebody would just erase them from the surface of the Earth.