One of the largest manhunts in Israel’s history was underway today for the terrorists who planted an empty refrigerator wired to deadly mortar shells in Jerusalem’s Zion Square which exploded Friday morning killing 13 persons and injuring 73. Twenty-five of the victims were still hospitalized today, four of them in critical condition.
More than 300 Arabs have been rounded up for questioning so far. The Jordan River bridges were closed to all but bona fide tourists as security authorities pieced together evidence which indicated that the mortar shells — one of 120 mm. and the other 81 mm. — were smuggled into Israel from Jordan, possibly by a “summer visitor” and that the infernal machine was assembled at a terrorist hideout in the Hebron hills, not far from Jerusalem.
Police are trying to trace the vehicle that brought the seemingly innocent ice box, an Amkor-10 refrigerator of Israeli manufacture, to the heart of Jerusalem and deposited it in the street crowded with pre-Sabbath shoppers.
TRYING TO MAINTAIN CALM
Police are also trying to maintain calm in this shocked and stunned city where crowds of infuriated Israeli youths rioted Friday night and yesterday, demanding vengeance for the terrorists’ carnage. Young Jews from the Musrara quarter which borders the Arab section of the city, hurled stones at Arab buildings yesterday and tried to storm the Old City but were held back by riot police.
Arab merchants evacuated the city’s watermelon market and their stalls were later burned to ashes by firebrands hurled by Jews. Police enlisted youths from the Merkaz Harav Kook Yeshiva and the Yeshiva Hakotel, both near the scene of the blast, to patrol the streets to prevent violence between Jews and Arabs.
Despite the tension, most Arab workers showed up for their jobs in the Jewish sections of Jerusalem today. An elderly Arab sat outside a coffee shop near the Damascus gate, his Israeli identity card in hand. “As long as we have this card, which we did not ask for, we expect the Israeli government to protect us” he told a passer-by.
Police seeking to cool hot tempers tried to explain to Israeli youth that counter-violence against Arabs would only play into hands of the terrorists who wanted to demonstrate that Jews and Arabs cannot co-exist peacefully in a united Jerusalem. But one youth declared, “All very well, but we want death for the terrorists.” Another said, “Let the Arabs suffer just as we Jews suffer from them.”
POLICE REJECT COMPLAINTS
Police, meanwhile, have rejected complaints from angry citizens that they did not act fast enough to prevent the fatal blast. The police said they received word of a possibly booby-trapped refrigerator at 9:58 a.m. Friday and that a patrol car was just 50 yards away when the explosion occurred.
But eye-witnesses said the ice box stood on the street for a least a half hour before the explosion and that passers-by whose suspicions were aroused were unable to reach the police until minutes before the blast because the telephone lines were busy. Police headquarters are a five-minute walk from Zion Square but apparently no one took the trouble to go there to report their suspicions.
Other eye-witnesses agreed that police were on the scene within moments after the explosion and cordoned off the area. But some charged that the Red Magen David ambulances were late arriving and that when they reached the scene there was insufficient medical personnel on hand to direct the evacuation of the wounded. All three of Jerusalem’s main hospitals were put on an emergency basis.
Premier Yitzhak Rabin and Defense Minister Shimon Peres joined senior police officials at the blast site. Rabin, grim-faced, would say nothing to reporters. Police Minister Shlomo Hillel described the blast as one of the worst terrorist attacks in Jerusalem’s history but appealed to the populace to remain calm and eschew any actions that might disrupt the normal life of the city.
SECURITY FORCES ON THE ALERT
By Friday afternoon, except for smashed shopfronts, sidewalks strewn with glass and debris and bloodstains, Zion Square had resumed its normal appearance. Heavy pre-Sabbath traffic moved slowly through the streets as police tried to hasten it and keep crowds of the curious away.
The police had most of their trouble with young hotheads in the Mahane Yehuda market only a few blocks from Zion Square who attacked some Arab youths working in Jewish shops on Mahane Yehuda Street. The Mahane Yehuda market was itself the target of a terrorist bombing on November 11, 1968 which claimed 12 lives, the worst incident in Jerusalem until Friday’s events.
Residents recalled that the 1968 bombing marked the beginning of a series of terrorist sabotage acts. On February 2, 1969, a blast at a Jerusalem supermarket killed two persons and on March 9 of the same year, several persons were injured when a bomb exploded at the Hebrew University cafeteria.
Security forces are alert against new outrages. The Palestine Liberation Organization news agency “Wafa” claimed the Zion Square bombing was the work of “heroic guerrillas from the occupied territories.” Only a day before, PLO chieftain Yassir Arafat pledged more intensive attacks against Israel in preparation for a war which he claimed was imminent.
Security forces are concentrating their search in the Hebron hills region which has become the center of increased anti-Israel activity recently. Several weeks ago, a resident of a village near Hebron was killed while preparing a bomb. Police have detained many persons from that region since then and have issued specific warnings to the populace to refrain from even attempting acts of sabotage.
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