Police and Shin Bet sources said Jewish terrorists were most likely responsible. At about 9:45 A.M. the large homemade bomb went off by a water cooler in the schoolyard. Just a few minutes later the 380 pupils at the school would have been in the yard for their class break, principal Yusuf Abed Rabo said. Police and army sappers called to the scene discovered a second bomb in the yard, and neutralized it. The five wounded children were hurt by glass and shrapnel flying into their classroom, and were taken by Red Crescent ambulance to a Hebron hospital for treatment.

The bombing at Ziff junction school was similar to two other bomb attacks on Palestinian schools. In one, eight children were wounded, and in a second attempt, a group of settler/terrorists from Bat Ayin was caught in the early morning hours outside an East Jerusalem girls' school after hauling a trailer packed with explosives to the front gates. In March, a bomb went off in another Palestinian school in east Jerusalem, injuring a teacher and four children. A Jewish terrorist group claimed responsibility for that attack but no arrests have ever been made.