Bus blast in Tel Aviv dashes any quick hopes for peace in Israeli-Gaza conflict

November 21, 2012 – ISRAEL – A police spokesman said that of the 10 wounded, three people were moderately to seriously hurt. “A bomb exploded on a bus in central Tel Aviv. This was a terrorist attack. Most of the injured suffered only mild injuries,” said Ofir Gendelman, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The bus was charred and blackened, its side windows blown out and its glass scattered on the asphalt. An Israeli driver who witnessed the explosion told Army Radio the bus was “completely charred inside.” Another witness said there were few passengers on the bus when it exploded. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said authorities were investigating whether the bomb had been planted and left on the bus or whether it was the work of a suicide bomber. Witnesses told the BBC that they saw a man leave something on the bus near the nation’s military headquarters. The attack happened on the eighth day of an Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip which it launched with the stated aim of preventing rocket strikes from the Palestinian enclave. Celebratory gunfire rang out in Gaza City when local radio stations reported news of the Tel Aviv explosion. The last time Israel’s commercial capital was hit by a serious bomb blast was in April 2006, when a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 11 people at a sandwich stand near the city’s old central bus station. “There are about 10 people wounded of whom three are in serious condition,” emergency services spokesman Zaki Heller told public radio. “There was an apparent explosion on a bus in Shaul HaMelech Street in Tel Aviv. The background and circumstances are not clear yet,” police spokesman Luba Samri told AFP. News of the explosion came as Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, is engaged in strenuous shuttle diplomacy to wring an elusive truce deal from Israel and Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers, after earlier attempts to end more than a week of fighting broke down amid heavy overnight bombing. Mrs. Clinton joined other diplomats in shuttling between Jerusalem, the West Bank and Cairo, trying to piece together a deal after a week of fighting and mounting casualties. After meeting Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, in Jerusalem on Tuesday night, Mrs. Clinton conferred with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank on Wednesday morning. –Telegraph