Third suicide bomber identified

JERUSALEM, Oct. 29 (JTA) — Israel has identified a university student as the last of the three Islamic militants who carried out the triple suicide bombing in Jerusalem’s Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall in September. An Israeli army statement said the identification of the bomber, 24- year-old Khalil Ibrahim Tawfik Sharif, was confirmed after the Palestinian Authority took blood samples from his parents for DNA testing. Sharif, a resident of the West Bank town of Nablus, studied at Bir Zeit University and was a member of the Hamas student council. He had been on a list of wanted terrorists after he took part in a May, 1996 drive-by shooting in which the U.S.-born teenager David Boim and another youth were killed. Five Israelis were killed in the Ben Yehuda blast. Israel had already identified the two other assailants in the Sept. 4 attack, and the two terrorists who carried out the July 30 double suicide bombing in Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market, which killed 16 Israelis.