[trident86]

washingtonpost.com
Bomb Kills 3 Americans In Gaza Strip
Guards Were Escorting U.S. Diplomatic Convoy

By Molly Moore and John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, October 16, 2003; Page A01


BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza Strip, Oct. 15 -- A huge bomb exploded Wednesday beneath a
car full of security guards escorting a U.S. diplomatic convoy through the
northern Gaza Strip, killing three Americans and injuring one, U.S.
officials said.

The blast, which ripped apart the armor-plated vehicle and flipped it upside
down, was the first fatal attack on U.S. officials or diplomats in the
Palestinian territories or Israel during the three-year-old Palestinian
uprising. U.S. and other foreign diplomats said the bombing could signal a
dramatic shift in the targets and politics of the conflict.

The State Department identified the dead Americans as John Branchizio, 36,
Mark T. Parson, 31, and John Martin Linde Jr., 30. Their home towns were not
released, but all were employees of DynCorp, a Reston-based government
contractor that provides security services to the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv.

"We are shocked by this latest terrorist outrage," U.S. Ambassador Daniel C.
Kurtzer said at a news conference in Tel Aviv. Kurtzer said "we don't know"
whether the attack was aimed at Americans.

While there was no immediate, credible claim of responsibility for the
attack, some Israeli and Palestinian officials said it appeared to have been
carried out by someone who knew that U.S. officials were in the convoy and
deliberately targeted them. The two large, silver Chevrolet sport-utility
vehicles in the four-vehicle convoy bore no markings indicating that they
belonged to Americans, but they were easily recognizable as the type of car
U.S. diplomats use when they travel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, U.S.
and Israeli officials said.

The attackers "would have known that this was not just a diplomatic convoy
but an American one, because the cars and the colors of the cars were
well-known," said Zalman Shoval, a former Israeli ambassador to the United
States and a senior adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "It's a new
development and a more far-reaching development. But that America is seen as
an enemy by these Palestinians who engage in terrorism is nothing new."

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat condemned "this ugly crime targeting
American observers as they were on a mission for security and peace."

"We strongly condemn this incident and we will conduct an investigation and
we will follow it to find the source of this attack," Palestinian Prime
Minister Ahmed Qureia told reporters in the West Bank.

In Washington, President Bush laid blame for the attack on the Palestinian
leadership. "Palestinian authorities should have acted long ago to fight
terror in all its forms," he said.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told Qureia in a telephone call that the
United States expected full cooperation in investigating "this heinous act
and in bringing these murderers to justice," according to State Department
spokesman Richard Boucher. Saeb Erekat, a member of Qureia's cabinet, said
that Palestinian security officials had begun an investigation of the
incident, and he offered to investigate it jointly with the United States.

The U.S. Embassy issued a notice advising American citizens to leave the
Gaza Strip and said an FBI team was being dispatched to investigate the
incident.

The attack occurred at about 10:15 a.m. (4:15 a.m. EDT) Wednesday, five
hours after the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution that
would have condemned Israel for building a controversial fence around the
West Bank, and as Israeli soldiers in the southern Gaza Strip continued a
six-day-old operation to destroy cross-border tunnels. Eight Palestinians
have been killed and more than 230 homes have been destroyed or severely
damaged in that operation.

The bomb detonated as the convoy was about 11/2 miles inside the Gaza Strip
from the Erez crossing at the Israeli border. They were driving along the
pockmarked, partially blacktopped road that runs the length of the Gaza
Strip and is frequently used by foreigners -- diplomats, aid workers,
journalists and others -- as well as by local Palestinians.

According to witnesses and U.S. Embassy officials, a Palestinian security
team led the convoy in one car, the American security guards occupied the
second vehicle, at least two U.S. diplomats were in the third, and another
Palestinian police car brought up the rear.

The diplomats in the third car had been planning to interview Palestinian
academics who had applied for Fulbright scholarships to study or teach in
the United States, said Kurtzer, the U.S. ambassador. U.S. diplomats, always
accompanied by security personnel, travel frequently to Gaza, he said.

"I heard a huge explosion," said Hashan Asaleyah, who lives in a white
concrete house with sky-blue doors a dozen feet from the road. "We ran to
the balcony and saw a car upside down and smoking. I saw three bodies. One
was in pieces."

Emergency workers collected body parts from across the pavement and the dirt
and wrapped them in white sheets, working gingerly around large pools of
blood.

Witnesses said that one of the bloodied victims stumbled out of the car but
died a short time later.

"We tried to save them; some were only wounded," said Imad Taha, 23, a
textile laborer who said he lives nearby.

The twisted carcass of the once-sleek Chevy lay on its back next to the
31/2-foot-deep hole that the bomb left in the red clay roadbed. Its front
end was ripped off and its undercarriage splayed open. The axle had snapped
like a toothpick. Chunks of foam from seat cushions and plastic molded drink
holders littered the ground.

When two U.S. investigators arrived to photograph the wreckage and the
eight-foot-wide crater left by the explosion, a mob of Palestinian boys and
young men hurled rocks at them. The two visibly frightened men climbed back
into their vehicles as Palestinian security officers fired their guns into
the air in an effort to control the unruly, chanting crowd.

U.S. officials said the vehicle had armor plating on its roof and sides, but
said they did not know whether the vehicle was equipped with armor on its
underside to protect against land mines. Israeli officials estimated that
the bomb, which was buried in the hardpan roadbed, might have weighed more
than 100 pounds.

A smaller bomb planted on another road in the northern Gaza Strip exploded
under an Israeli military all-terrain vehicle Wednesday morning, injuring
three soldiers, according to an Israeli military spokesman. The spokesman
said the two incidents were not believed to be related.

Homemade bombs concocted from petroleum products, sugar, cosmetics, shampoo
and varying amounts of TNT are commonly used by militants in the Gaza Strip.
The explosives are frequently planted in potholes or beneath roadbeds on
routes used by Israeli military vehicles and have been used to blow up
50-ton tanks as well as lighter vehicles.

Some of the explosives are detonated on impact when a vehicle rolls over
them; others are more sophisticated and are set off by remote control. A
gray cable hanging into the crater left by Wednesday's attack on the U.S.
vehicle suggested that the bomb might have been ignited by remote control
from a nearby concrete hut.

Until Wednesday, foreign diplomats and international officials had been
considered largely off-limits by Palestinian militant groups, which stressed
that their conflict was against Israel. The two largest groups -- Islamic
Jihad and the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, which are both
headquartered in Gaza -- denied responsibility for the bombing.

However, as Israel has demolished homes, assassinated suspected terrorists
and established checkpoints and closures in the Palestinian territories in
response to Palestinian suicide bombings, Palestinians -- particularly in
the Gaza Strip, where sentiments are more strident and radical -- have grown
increasingly angry with the U.S. government for offering no criticism of
Israel.

American policy "is one-sided in favor of Israel and against us," said Jihad
Amari, 17, a high school student who was among the crowd of young
Palestinians who threw rocks and stones at the U.S. investigators at the
scene of the blast.

Anderson reported from Tel Aviv. Staff writer Dana Priest in Washington
contributed to this report.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company