Gunman fires on Israeli bus

Associated Press

JERUSALEM – Mazal Amsalem saw the gunman through the window and cried out to the schoolgirls sitting near her on the No. 25 bus to get down.

The girls did as they were told, and began reciting psalms as automatic gunfire shattered the bus windows around them.

Sitting crouched on the sidewalk, Amsalem recounted the moments of terror as a Palestinian gunman sprayed the bus with gunfire, killing two people, injuring more than 40 others and turning a Sunday afternoon commute home from school into a horror.

One of the dead was identified by police as Shoshana Ben Yishai, a 16-year-old from the West Bank settlement of Betar Illit who immigrated with her parents from Long Island when she was 5 years old. She was shot in the head as she traveled home from school.

The area of the shooting was in a disputed part of Jerusalem, the French Hill district, which is near several Palestinian villages and neighborhoods.

The intersection, which had a trail of blood running through it, was cordoned off at the start of the busy afternoon rush-hour and police swarmed the area. Backpacks were strewn on the ground near the shattered glass from the bus windows.

The bus door and most of the windows were either blown out or punctured by bullets, and bloodied victims were visible through the windows for several minutes as paramedics rushed to the scene. One man, his head bloodied, sat motionless in the back seat.

The gunman, identified by police as a 24-year-old member of the militant group Islamic Jihad, managed to empty his M-16 of bullets before being killed by a civilian, a border guard and a soldier who opened fire, police said.

The shooting came hours after the Israeli government told the army to prepare to withdraw from areas of West Bank towns it entered two weeks ago to hunt down and arrest Palestinian militants.

The pullout commenced early today in Qalqilya, despite the shooting.