JERUSALEM — Hamas said that a man who succumbed to wounds suffered in Monday’s bus bombing in Jerusalem was the terrorist who placed a bomb in the vehicle.
On Wednesday, the terrorist group claimed in a statement that the bomber was a 19-year-old Palestinian from the al-Ayda refugee camp outside of Bethlehem, the Times of Israel reported. His name was not published as details of the Israeli investigation remain behind a gag order.
Israel Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told the Times of Israel on Tuesday that police officers would question the wounded and did not rule out the possibility of potential suspects among them. Hamas in its statement did not fully claim responsibility for the attack, which injured 21.
Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center confirmed that a man who lost both of his legs in the bus explosion died Wednesday evening.
The public bus was traveling in southern Jerusalem on Monday afternoon when it exploded, engulfing the nearly empty vehicle in flames. The flames scorched an adjacent bus, as well as a nearby car. The victims — including a teenage girl, who was seriously injured in the explosion, and six others who were left in moderate condition — had burns on their upper bodies, as well as wounds from nails and ball bearings packed into the explosive device.
Eden Dadon, 15, was seriously burned.
“Everything was dark and smoky, I looked for my daughter and she was all burned,” Dadon’s mother, Racheli, who was on the bus with Eden, told Ynet. “In a month she’ll be 16, and now she’s sedated and on a respirator. I pray she gets out of this.”
Or Bondy, a 25-year-old newlywed and another victim of the blast, was also left burned and could barely walk at first.
“I always pushed it aside,” Bondy’s father, Tzadok, told the Times of Israel regarding Jerusalem’s recent wave of terror attacks. “Now it’s infiltrated my family.”
The attack follows a six-month wave of Palestinian stabbing and shooting attacks in Jerusalem, the West Bank and across Israel. The rate of those attacks had declined to normal levels, though Israeli officials remained concerned about a flare-up in violence surrounding upcoming religious holidays, including Passover.
