At least seven killed in Explosion at Jerusalem's university

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, August 01, 2002

At least seven killed in Explosion at Jerusalem's university

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An apparently suicide bombing occurred Wednesday afternoon in a crowded cafeteria at the Mount Scopus campus of Jerusalem's Hebrew University, killing at least seven and injuring over 80, 14 seriously, Israel TV reported.

The injured were being taken to hospitals in the city, but the evacuation efforts were hampered by the location of the attack, which was inside a building on the campus.

Though classes were not in session, students were taking exams at the time of the blast, and the cafeteria, situated in the university's Frank Sinatra building, was crowded with diners.

Some of those in the cafeteria were foreign students taking summer school classes. Israel's Channel 2 television said Arab students were believed to be among the casualties.

"This was one place that I thought was safe," said a shaken and bloodied survivor of the attack, identified herself as Anat.

"There was a terrorist and he blew himself up," a witness, identified only as Shai, told the Israeli Army Radio. "There is a lot of chaos, a lot of police. It's a mess, there are a lot of wounded."

Another eyewitness, Oshrit, said that although there were security personnel in nearly every building, "the security is not thorough, they check your bag and that's it."

"At first we didn't know what was happening. The whole building shook," she said. "The street was full of smoke and broken glass."

Rescue vehicles and police rushed to the cafeteria, swiftly removing bloodied victims to nearby medical services. Police closedseveral nearby streets. Sniffer dogs were checking for more bombs.

The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, has claimed responsibility for the attack. Hamas has repeatedly sworn to avenge the assassination last week of its military commander Salah Shehadeh in an Israel air raid that also killed 14 civilians,nine of them children under 11.

Ovadia Shemesh, deputy director of Shaare Zedek Medical Center, said most of the wounded were between the age of 18 and 30, and that most of the injuries were caused by shrapnel and the collapse of the cafeteria ceiling.

David Baker, an official in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office, said that "Israel is fighting a pitched battle against terror and for the right to walk down the street, take a bus or sitin a cafeteria without the fear of being decimated by Palestinian terrorism."

There were unconfirmed reports that the body of a suicide bomberwas among the corpses at the scene.

It was the second bomb attack in the city within the past 24 hours. On Tuesday five people were injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a falafel stand in downtown Jerusalem.

The Mount Scopus campus is adjacent to the West Bank, and is close to Arab neighborhoods of the holy city.

Avi Dichter, chief of Israel's General Security Service, or ShinBet, said Tuesday that 12 "terror" attacks had been foiled over thelast week alone. He added that at present the Shin Bet has active warnings of 60 planned terror attacks.

Just hours before the bombing in the Hebrew University, Israeli security cabinet agreed Wednesday to expel a relative of a Palestinian bomber from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip, the first such expulsion since the beginning of the Intifada (uprising) in September, 2000.

The security cabinet made the decision during a special session Wednesday morning devoted to finding ways to battle suicide bombersand other terror attacks.

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