[YESTERDAY]

Three separate Palestinian attacks yesterday killed three Israelis, including a policeman, and wounded five others.

The earliest attack took place on Tuesday night when David Buhbut, 67, of Ma'aleh Adumim, was in Azzariyeh east of Jerusalem to buy building materials. He was apparently kidnapped, beaten and burned to death. His body was discovered early yesterday morning.

The second incident took place at 3 P.M. yesterday when Yossi Ajami, 36, of Jerusalem, was shot dead as he drove past the village of Ya'abed, west of Jenin. He was a contractor working on a bypass road in the area, and a Romanian worker traveling with him was lightly wounded in the shooting.

The third incident was the most serious, the first suicide bombing in Israel since August 4. Around 5 P.M., a police car carrying three policemen from the Iron Valley police station spotted two suspicious figures at a bus stop on the road outside the Umm al-Fahm junction. When the police approached to question tghem, one man blew himself up, killing 21-year-old policeman Moshe Hizkiyahu. A resident of Moshav Alyachin, Hizkiyahu is survived by his parents and two sisters.

The bomber, believed to be from the Jenin area where the army had lifted its curfew yesterday for a few hours, was killed instantly along with the Hizkiyahu. Four others were wounded, including a second policeman, from Beit Jann.

[TODAY]


At least five people were killed and 40 injured, including 10 seriously, when an explosion went off on a bus travelling on Tel Aviv's Allenby Street at around 1 P.M. on Thursday.

Magen David Adom emergency services and police confirmed that there were fatalities in the blast, and that a large number of people were injured. Ambulances rushed to the scene and within a few minutes had completed the evacuation of the injured to the nearby Ichilov hospital.

The blast occurred aboard bus No. 4, at the corner of Allenby and Rothschild Streets, when the suicide bomber apparently boarded the bus and, several seconds later, detonated his device.

An eyewitness, identified only as Sarit, told Army Radio, "We heard an explosion, very big. We saw a large cloud of smoke and immediately lots of police came. People came out to help with first aid. We're trying to give them water. We saw the front of the bus and it apparently caught on fire."