Bomb blast kills 7 at Hebrew University

JERUSALEM -- A bomb hidden in a bag ripped through a busy cafeteria at Hebrew University, killing seven people Wednesday as it shattered the academic peace and left behind pools of blood in one of the few places where young Jews and Arabs still mixed freely.\nMore than 70 people were wounded in the bombing, the second to hit Jerusalem in two days.\nThe U.S. Embassy confirmed that one of the dead was an American citizen. Jehuda Hiss, head of the Israeli forensic medicine center, told The Associated Press the determination was based on identification papers, but declined to release the name. Details about the nationalities of the other casualties were not immediately available.\nSheikh Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of the militant Hamas group, linked the attack to Israel's air raid last week on Gaza City that killed the organization's military chief and 14 civilians, including nine children. Other Hamas leaders told AP the group had not issued a formal claim of responsibility but praised the attack as revenge for the Gaza airstrike.\nIsrael has tried to end Palestinian attacks by sending troops to impose a curfew in most West Bank cities and towns for the past six weeks. After a lull, there's been an outbreak of shootings and bombings in the past week.\nIsrael's Security Cabinet, meeting after Wednesday's blast, decided Israel would retaliate within hours, Israel Radio said. The report could not be independently confirmed.\nPresident Bush condemned the attack "in the strongest possible terms," and said it was perpetrated by "killers who hate the thought of peace."\nLike other deadly attacks in the past, the bombing coincided with a review of U.S. peacemaking prospects -- this time with King Abdullah of Jordan, whose country has a peace treaty with Israel.\nIn two days of talks beginning Thursday, the monarch hopes to persuade the Bush administration to step up its timetable for Palestinian statehood and for Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza.\nU.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan condemned the bombing and again urged Israelis and Palestinians "to end the cycle of violence, revenge and retaliation."\nThe lunchtime blast in the university's Frank Sinatra International Student Center struck a popular student hangout at a school that's been an island of tolerance throughout the nearly two years of Mideast fighting.\nAlastair Goldrein, 19, from Liverpool, England, said the cafeteria was a gathering place for students of all backgrounds.\n"I was on my way to lunch. There was a huge, huge explosion. Everything shook and then there was this deathly silence," said Goldrein, who has been taking courses in Jewish studies for the past year. "I ran in, there were people lying around wailing, covered in blood. Scenes that are indescribable, clothes and flesh torn apart."\nThe bag with the bomb was placed on a table in the center of the cafeteria, police said. "It was not a suicide bomber," said police spokeswoman Sigal Toledo. The blast brought down part of the ceiling and blew out windows.\nThe explosion occurred at the university's Mount Scopus campus, a Jewish enclave surrounded by Palestinian neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city. The student center was named for Sinatra, who attended the 1978 dedication of the building.\n Money for the student center was raised by members of the Friends of Hebrew University from the west coast of the United States, many of whom had connections in the entertainment industry.\nPolice maintain heavy security at the university, with student backpacks checked thoroughly by guards at entrances, students said.\n However, Benny Vered, deputy editor of the school newspaper, said the perimeter fence was easy to cross. In April, the newspaper predicted such an attack, he told Israel Radio.\n"I held a sign that said 'terrorist' and crossed back and forth over the fence for 40 minutes," he said, adding that no one stopped him or even appeared to notice.\nThe university said 23,000 students attend the school, about 5,000 of them Arabs and 1,500 from abroad.\nShortly before Wednesday's attack, the Rev. Jesse Jackson met Yasser Arafat at the Palestinian leader's West Bank headquarters in Ramallah. Palestinian authorities were "continuing our efforts, and will continue, from every aspect, to stop the violence," Arafat said at a joint news conference.\nJackson was to go to Gaza to meet Yassin, the Hamas spiritual leader, but canceled after the bombing. In a statement, Jackson said he called off the meeting "to show proper respect for the victims" of the attack. He said the bombings are "horribly merciless" and "will not help move toward establishing a Palestinian state."\nYassin, in linking the bombing to the Gaza airstrike last week, said Israel should have expected a revenge attack.\n"When Israel bombs a civilian building full of women and children, and kills 15 people this is the response they should expect," he said.\nThe Palestinian Authority said in a statement that it "absolutely condemns the attack against Hebrew University." However, the Palestinian leadership also said it "considers Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon responsible for this cycle of terror."\nSharon's government has slightly eased the tough restrictions placed on Palestinian movements, but the latest attacks could lead to even tougher measures.\n"Israel is fighting a pitched battle against terror, and for the right to walk down the street, take a bus or sit in a cafeteria without the fear of being decimated by Palestinian terrorism," said David Baker of the prime minister's office.\nOn Tuesday, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up at a fast-food stand in Jerusalem, wounding several Israelis.\nAfter withholding tax revenues from the Palestinians for much of the past 22 months, Israel on Wednesday transferred $15 million to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority.\nIsrael had withheld an estimated $600 million in tax money since shortly after the fighting erupted in September 2000. Aid groups say the number of undernourished Palestinian children has risen sharply. Palestinian unemployment is rampant.