A bomb exploded in the crowded Mahane, Yehuda market this morning causing slight injuries to 22 people, most of whom were treated at Shaare Zedek Hospital and sent home: Five of the victims were still hospitalized this evening. Hospital officials said most of the persons brought in after the explosion were suffering from shock.
The market place has been a frequent target of terrorist attacks, especially on Fridays when housewives do their Sabbath shopping. Today’s bombing occurred at 10:50 a.m. local time, apparently timed to cause maximum casualties. The explosive device was concealed in a can deposited under a vegetable stand. El Fatah, the military arm of the Palestine Liberation Organization, claimed credit for the outrage.
The incident aggravated the running dispute between vendors who complain of in sufficient police protection for the marketplace and the low enforcement authorities who are constantly urging civilians to be on the alert for suspicious looking objects.
The owner of the vegetable stand claimed that he had not seen the can containing the bomb police said it was there unnoticed for at least a half hour before the explosion. They said that even if police officers inspected every stand in the market, which is not possible, they could not have prevented the terrorist from planting the booby-trapped can since the crowds were so thick.
RED-FACED OVER APPARENT LAXITY
But the police were red-faced over the apparent laxity on their part which might have resulted in a tragedy of major proportions in Jerusalem earlier this week. A special police investigating panel found a police sapper guilty of negligence when he failed to make a thorough inspection of a car parked on a busy Jerusalem street Tuesday morning with a powerful explosive device concealed in its trunk.
The sapper was summoned by local shopkeepers who became suspicious of a silver Mercedes parked just off Ben Yehuda St. in front of a crowded cafe during the early morning rush hour. The sapper and other police officers made a perfunctory inspection of the vehicle and left. Almost three hours passed before another police team, summoned by alarmed civilians, pried open the trunk and discovered a large bomb primed to explode within a short time. It was safely dismantled.
Police Inspector General Haim Tavori said today that disciplinary action would be taken against the sapper but did not say whether it would be a reprimand, a loss of pay or a more, serious penalty. The heroine of Ben Yehuda St., meanwhile, was honored today and presented on IL 10,000 reward by a citizens group promoting security. She is Helen Stettner, a newspaper vendor who was the first to report the parked car to police. Her first customer today was Mayor Teddy Kollek who turned up at the newsstand with a kiss, a Jerusalem City Medal and warm words of appreciation for her vigilance.
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