Thursday, October 29, 1998

At 7:30 AM, a Palestinian suicide bomber attempted to direct his explosives-laden car alongside an Egged bus full of schoolchildren on their way from Kfar Darom to Atzmona. The army jeep accompanying the school bus blocked his way; the car hit the jeep, which went up in flames, killing the soldier. A helicopter transported the wounded to Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon. The bus continued on to Atzmona, where teachers and psychologists counseled the children. One Palestinian was wounded when he ran away from the scene of the bombing, refusing to adhere to IDF soldiers' instructions to stop. PA police then shot at the soldiers.  The explosion shattered windows in the adjacent community of Kfar Darom. A mother in Kfar Darom told Arutz-7's Ron Meir today, "We heard the explosion, like we always do. But the army never lets us out of the community when there is an attack like this. Almost all the mothers here have children on the bus, which was carrying kids from first to eighth grades. All the women were beside themselves, crying and praying.

It was very sad..."  Chani Tzadok, staff psychologist in the Talmud Torah school of Atzmona, talked to Arutz-7 from the school bus on the way back from school to Kfar Darom. She said, "We didn't have regular studies in school today. The staff held many talks with the children about what happened today... We drove by the site of the attack, and we saw the charred bus, and they realized what a great miracle had happened to them. They recited the blessing, 'Blessed is He... Who performed a miracle for me in this place.' Many of the children also realize that a soldier died saving their lives, and they constantly ask how the other soldiers are..." 

REACTIONS TO THE ATTACK 

Defense Minister Yitzchak Mordechai said that the attack would not delay the implementation of the Wye Agreement, and that the Palestinian Authority had already started working to find those responsible for today's attack.