OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 19 September — A Palestinian blew himself up at a bus stop in the Israeli town of Umm Al-Fahm yesterday, killing an Israeli policeman and wounding at least two other people in the first such attack in six weeks.
The man detonated the explosives as a police van pulled up at the bus stop to check him, officials said. The officers had acted on a tip that a suspicious-looking man with a bag was at a bus stop, security sources said. The assailant’s original plan apparently was to blow himself up on the bus, police said.
Mahmoud Zahar, a spokesman for Hamas, welcomed the attack, saying that "the Palestinians have every right to fight against occupation."
The White House decried the bombing as "one step backward" from peace but said that US President George W. Bush still seeks the eventual creation of a Palestinian state. "The president will continue to work diligently toward achieving that goal, and it remains important, and the president hopes that we can get back to the path of slow, quiet progress," said Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer.
In violence elsewhere, Palestinians shot dead an Israeli at an army roadblock in the northern West Bank hours after Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian. Israeli military sources said the Israeli was shot at a military checkpoint near the Jewish settlement of Shaked, west of the West Bank city of Jenin.
Earlier, Israeli troops entered the village of Tamoun, about 15 km (nine miles) southeast of Jenin, to arrest Palestinians. Witnesses said the soldiers fired at two men who tried to flee by car, killing one and wounding the other.
In a separate incident, the body of an unidentified Palestinian man was found near the road in the village of Aqqaba, about 10 km (six miles) northwest of Tamoun. Villagers said they saw Israeli military jeeps in the area, but the army had no immediate comment on the incident.
Israeli border police also found the half-burned and bullet-riddled body of an Israeli man in a garbage dump in Eizariya, an Arab neighborhood bordering Jerusalem, and close to the Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim.
In the Gaza Strip, gunfire from Israeli troops sent UN officials scrambling for cover as they toured the Rafah refugee camp. No one was hurt in the shooting.
The new burst of violence came a day after Israel turned down a Palestinian offer to halt attacks on civilians in Israel, as the first stage of a gradual truce.
The dispute over the terms of a truce came as Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian Planning Minister Nabil Shaath met Tuesday with senior Mideast mediators, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
