Israel holds Syria responsible for suicide bombings, official says

JERUSALEM -- Israel holds Syria responsible for a double suicide bombing that killed 16 people, a senior Israeli official said Wednesday in a warning that implied possible retaliation.\nThe militant Islamic group Hamas claimed the attack Tuesday in the desert city of Beersheba, when two bombers from the West Bank city of Hebron blew themselves up seconds apart in two buses.\nRaanan Gissin, a senior aide to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, pointed to neighboring Syria Wednesday, saying Hamas leaders are permitted to work out of the Syrian capital, Damascus.\n"The fact that Hamas is operating from Syria will not grant it immunity," Gissin told The Associated Press. Last year Israel attacked targets in Syria after a Palestinian bombing.\nIsraeli security sources said earlier that Sharon and his military commanders had decided to stage more strikes to eliminate militant Palestinian leaders in response to the bus attack.\nThe twin bombings in Beersheba shattered hopes in Israel that the period of suicide attacks -- more than 100 in four years -- was over. "The nightmare is back," the newspaper Yediot Ahronot said Wednesday in its main headline above a photo of a burning bus.\nThe last suicide attack was in March, and many Israelis believed the militants had been defeated, or at least suffered a serious blow.\nIsraeli leaders had boasted of increasingly effective means in fighting bombers, including a large network of Palestinian informers, mass arrests and an expanding barrier to separate Israel from the West Bank. Sharon pledged Wednesday to speed up construction of the barrier.\nTuesday's bombers came from the West Bank city of Hebron, about 15 miles north of Beersheba. Ahmed Kawasmeh, 26, and Nassim Jabari, 22, had known each other for years and were members of a secretive Hamas cell led by Kawasmeh's cousin, Imad, a top fugitive.\nThe Kawasmeh clan is one of the largest in Hebron and had dispatched five suicide bombers in recent years. Israeli troops destroyed Ahmed Kawasmeh's family apartment, arrested three of his brothers and sealed off Hebron.\nSharon consulted with his defense minister and army commanders late Tuesday and decided to step up military raids in Hebron, including targeted killings of militant leaders, security sources said. No large-scale military operation was planned, the sources said.\nSharon also said he is determined to go ahead with a planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements next year. "(The attack) has no connection to disengagement," he said, referring to his program.\nIsraelis have pointed to the barrier as the main factor in the drop-off of attacks in Israel, and residents of Beersheba, a normally quiet city of 200,000 people in the Negev Desert, clamored for completion of the barrier around the West Bank's southern end to protect them.\nSpeaking to reporters Wednesday after a meeting with Israel's president, Sharon pledged to act. "The fence will be completed according to the Cabinet decision, and we are doing all we can to speed up the process as much as possible," he said.\nThe barrier has been widely condemned internationally because of the hardships it causes for Palestinians. Completion has been held up by Israel's own Supreme Court, which ordered route changes to ease conditions of the Palestinians.\nThe bombs went off just seconds apart on the No. 6 and No. 12 buses, on opposite sides of a busy intersection Tuesday afternoon. The buses lay stricken in the street, their windows blown out, roofs buckled outward, interiors gutted by flames. Forensic workers picked up body parts, including a woman's severed hand with a silver ring.\nNissim Vaknin, a passenger on the No. 6 bus, said he was sitting behind the driver, next to a man he later realized was the bomber. Vaknin described the bomber as a "young guy, quiet, not tense." When an elderly woman with shopping bags boarded, Vaknin gave up his seat to her and walked to the back, a gesture that saved his life.\nThe elderly woman was killed in the blast several seconds later. Vaknin said he was plagued by guilt. "If it weren't for me, she'd still be alive today," he told Israel Army Radio.\nA 3-year-old boy was also among the victims. More than 80 people were wounded, including 19 school-age children.\nHamas said the attack was retaliation for Israel's assassination of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin and his successor, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, earlier this year.\nIn Gaza, thousands of Hamas supporters celebrated in the streets, with Rantisi's widow, Rasha, calling the attack "heroic" and saying her husband's soul was "happy in heaven." She threw candies to the cheering crowd around her house.\nPalestinian leader Yasser Arafat said in a statement that "the Palestinian interest requires a stop to harming all civilians so as not to give Israel pretext to continue its aggression against our people."\nThe U.S. State Department brushed aside Arafat's comments and said Hamas must be put out of business.\nThe delayed Hamas response -- Yassin was killed in March and Rantisi in April -- was a sign of the group's increasing difficulties in carrying out attacks.\nAlong with the partially completed barrier, the military said it had foiled dozens of suicide bomb plots, arrested hundreds of terror suspects and crippled the Hamas leadership with assassinations of Yassin and Rantisi.\nPalestinian analyst Hani al-Masri agreed. "But now, the military operations (attacks) are a way for Hamas to increase its popularity among Palestinians," he said.\nTuesday's attack was the deadliest since a female suicide bomber killed 21 people on Oct. 4, 2003, in the northern city of Haifa.\nThe last suicide bombing in Israel was March 14, when two Palestinian attackers killed 11 Israelis in the southern port of Ashdod. Since then, 338 Palestinians, including militants and civilians, have been killed by Israeli troops. In the same period, 29 Israelis were killed, including soldiers who died in attacks in Gaza and Israeli motorists shot by Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.