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CNN Live Today

Islamic Jihad Claims Responsibility for Car Bombing

Aired June 05, 2002 - 11:33   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: In other news today, and on a related subject here, the militant group Islamic Jihad has claimed responsibility for a bus bombing. This one taking place in Northern Israel today. It killed at least 16 people, and in this case, the suicide bomber drove alongside the bus, and then set off a powerful car bomb.

Our Jerrold Kessel is in Megiddo in Northern Israel where the attack happened -- Jerrold, I don't remember hearing of a bus attack happening like this before where the car actually drove alongside the bus in order to explode it.

JERROLD KESSEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it is a first time, Daryn. There have been car bombs before, but the fact that there is a suicide bomber inside, attacking the bus in this way, and it really was a very highly coordinated attack, clearly as the bomber got the devastating results that he aimed at.

Now, everything quiet and normal, full (ph) traffic flowing along this traffic artery here in Northern Israel, but it was a devastating scene (UNINTELLIGIBLE) this morning when the bomber struck, leaving 16 killed. It has now been confirmed that 13 of them are Israeli soldiers.

The bomb -- there was some heart-rending scenes as one eyewitness said, he saw two -- a man and a woman embrace as they were unable to get out of the burning bus, and the bus was left as a complete -- wreckage was very difficult to see, and to count the dead and to identify them immediately, as so horrendous was the scene on the site.

But there was also some heart-warming incidents in terms of the survivors. The bus driver for one, Miki Harel, this is the fourth time his bus has been -- come under attack. Either a suicide bomber or some kind of bomb on it. He survived again. He was only lightly wounded.

Now, we are here in this very picturesque and beautiful valley, which really is at odds with the circumstances here, and it is interesting, and I want to take you a little bit -- if our camera can pan around, this is just down the road here, we are going to pan around, is literally the West -- start of the West Bank and then town of Jenin, that has been so much in the news and the contentious issue, which the Israelis have often said is the town of suicide bombers, where there was that major Israeli operation, and where indeed, just at the far -- over those trees that you see in the foreground, just about eight or nine miles on the edge of the horizon, just below that mountain top, is the town of Jenin.

Now Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers went in there this morning, soon after the attack. But the Israelis -- the attack here at this crossroads, the Megiddo crossroads, the Israelis that that was mainly part of their preemptive incursion of the ilk -- of the way that they have been doing it for the past several weeks in a way to preempt the bombers.

Yasser Arafat has taken action. He has (UNINTELLIGIBLE) state, saying that he has ordered the Palestinian security officials to go after those who sent the bombers, and to arrest them. That's the news as we await the --- what the Israeli cabinet will do, the security cabinet, that is set to convene again this evening.

If we do another pan across with our camera on the other side of this valley, it is very interesting because what we have here -- this is called, as I say, the Megiddo Junction. Now, Megiddo is a very interesting biblical place name, and if we move across here, we will see a archaeological mound, tell, as they call it, right there on the horizon in front of us, and Megiddo is what is referred to in the New Testament or is at least, said to be the place in the New Testament that is Armageddon. Armageddon, which in the New Testament is said -- supposed to be the place from where there will be the final battle before the end of the world.

Now, that may be -- this incident may not be in that realm, but there is some who worry that this conflict may yet be heading in that direction -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Jerrold Kessel in Megiddo, in Northern Israel, thank you for putting those places of where this latest attack happened, thank you for putting those places in perspective.

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