In one of the side streets near Jerusalem's popular Jewish Mahane Yehuda outdoor market two bodies lay beneath covers, a few steps away from the burnt-out wreck of the explosives-laden car that blew them up.
Firemen, ambulance workers, police and soldiers feverishly kept onlookers from getting too close to the scene of the attack, which claimed two Israeli lives, one of them the daughter of the leader of the right-wing National Religious Party.
"The bodies were unrecognizable, burnt and severed," said a young man who slid down the roof of a nearby house in curiosity minutes after the blast.
Pieces of the car, some thrown fifty meters (165 feet), littered the area.
In the street where the bomb was planted, security forces systematically opened for inspection all the other cars, in many cases by smashing their windows.
Religious Jews, members of a special group, combed neighboring houses to recover pieces of the victims that may have hit the walls. Judaism prefers that all the remains of its dead are buried.
Local residents remember well a similar bomb attack in July 1997 when two Palestinian suicide bombers killed themselves and 15 Israelis in the market, and the fear that came with it.
"It's lucky this bomb only exploded in a small street," said Eli, 52, giving an opinion shared by many.
Sarah Baroukh, 60, was at her desk, at work in the building across the street when the bomb went off at the 3:00 pm news hour.
"At the moment when the radio was announcing that Israeli tanks were withdrawing in the West Bank, I heard an enormous explosion," she said, alluding to the implementation of a truce struck overnight to stop the clashes.
"It's symbolic," she said of the coincidence.
"On the one hand, I think it's a catastrophe, that we must stop everything, and at the same time, I also think it's by dialogue with the Palestinians that we will arrive at something."
Hagai Zmora, 25, said he was lucky. Several minutes before the explosion he tried to get money from a bank machine located several paces from the blast site.
The machine wasn't working, so he walked away.
"A few minutes later, I heard ambulances coming from everywhere," he said, visibly shaken.
A few blocks away, dozens of militants from Kach, a racist Jewish movement declared illegal by authorities, were yelling: "Death to Arabs," "Death to Arafat," and "We want vengeance."
"Arabs have to get out of Israel, the massacre of Jews must stop," said one of the group, Moshe, 20. In his hands a sign saying "Kahana was right," referring to the group's founder.
Suddenly, the militants rushed toward the site of the explosion and tried to break through the police barricades, starting scuffles with the police.
"It's not the Jews that we have to hit, it's the Arabs," yelled a woman toward the police.
An hour after the explosion, in the market's main road, dozens of panicked people ran for the exit. "There's a suspect bag," said a winded woman.
Several minutes later, it was declared a false alarm. But the fear had returned – JERUSALEM (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
