A bomb attack was foiled Friday afternoon in Jerusalem when an Egged bus driver discovered an explosive device packed in a watermelon while making a routine check as the bus was parked outside the Malkha shopping center in Jerusalem, said reports.
Sappers sent to the site successfully deactivated the bomb, reported the Israeli press and agencies.
Channel One reported that Jerusalem district police commander Superintendent Miki Levy said that police were on alert for a bomb attempt in occupied Jerusalem.
"There were specific warnings about the possibility of placing an explosive device in Jerusalem," he said. "Therefore, today we were deployed (in Jerusalem), especially in areas with large concentrations of people."
In a separate incident Friday afternoon, Palestinians fired on Israeli troops at the Karni-Netzarim road in the Gaza Strip. There were no casualties and the soldiers returned fire. Palestinians also fired at an Israeli patrol alongside the Alon Moreh settlement near Nablus in the West Bank. There were no casualties or damage. The soldiers returned fire, according to Haaretz.
But AFP said that two Palestinian youths were wounded in the Karni incident.
"The soldiers first fired in the air and then on us," one of the teenagers told AFP. He insisted that no clashes had provoked the shooting.
The other Palestinian suffered serious head injuries, said the agency.
Meanwhile, Haaretz reported that Israeli forces imposed a curfew on two Palestinian villages near Nablus after clashes erupted between soldiers and Palestinians on a road leading to a Jewish settlement. The curfew prevented the villagers from leaving their homes and closed access roads to all traffic moving in or out.
Three mortar shells were also fired by Palestinians near the Gush Katif settlement in the Gaza Strip, causing no injuries, a military source was quoted by AFP as saying.
Since the September 2000 eruption of the latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation, the media has reported that Palestinians have killed at least 125 Israelis with weapons ranging from stones and knives to machineguns and car bombs. Israeli military sources have reported well over 600 injuries to Israelis of Jewish descent.
In the same time period, according to the UK newspaper The Guardian, Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers have killed 13 Arab Israelis and 510 Palestinians with weapons ranging from machineguns and tanks to US-made Apache helicopter gunships and F-16s.
According to an Amnesty International report, nearly 100 of the Palestinians killed were children. In addition, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has reported over 14,000 Palestinians wounded.
Jewish author Noam Chomsky, who according to a New York Times Book Review article is “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” has been quoted as saying: “State terrorism is an extreme form of terrorism, generally much worse than individual terrorism because it has the resources of a state behind it.” - Albawaba.com
