MEGIDDO JUNCTION (Israel), June 5: A massive car bomb turned a rush-hour Israeli bus into a fireball on Wednesday, killing 13 Israeli soldiers and five others, wounding dozens of others and raising fears of a new cycle of violence after a period of relative calm.

Israeli military radio, quoting police sources, said 16 Israelis were killed, including the 13 soldiers. The two other bodies were not identified and might have been the attacker or attackers in the car, it added.

Thirty-eight people were hospitalized, including one in critical condition, after the attack in northern Israel, the radio said.

The radical Palestinian group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the deadliest attack on Israel in at least a month, in a statement faxed to AFP in Beirut.

The rush-hour blast at Megiddo, the biblical Armageddon, between the port city of Haifa and the Palestinian West Bank town of Jenin, came amid US efforts to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Police said the blast was caused by explosives packed into a car that overtook the bus as it plied the route between Tel Aviv and Tiberias and which was full at the time of the attack.

The bus was reduced to a charred skeleton, while virtually nothing was left of the car.

Debris was strewn 100 metres around the site of the blast, which left a crater 20 centimetres deep in front of a prison and near the road to Jenin.

Security barriers were stained with the blood of the victims and the pungent odour of burnt flesh filled the air.

The attack was the fifth by Palestinians in the last month and took the highest toll of Israelis since a suicide bomber killed 16 other people in a pool hall south of Tel Aviv on May 7.

The blast, which came on the 35th anniversary of the start of the six-day war between Israel and its Arab neighbours, was expected to dominate a meeting of Israel’s security cabinet by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Previous such attacks have been followed by massive Israeli retribution, notably the virtual reoccupation of the entire West Bank launched on March 29 after a suicide bomber hit the northern Israeli town of Netanya.

Israeli forces took over the main cities in the West Bank in an operation lasting more than a month.

Since then the army has made frequent incursions into Palestinian-ruled areas to round up guerillas, and claims to have prevented dozens of suicide attacks by radical groups.

At the same time Arafat has pledged to reform his ramshackle Palestinian Authority, notably the security forces.

George Tenet, head of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), met Arafat for three hours on Tuesday at his Ramallah headquarters to discuss a shake-up of the security services.

US Assistant Secretary of State William Burns also has been touring the region seeking support for a “three-track” US strategy for peace.

Tenet proposed that Arafat combine his sprawling security empire into only three services instead of the present dozen, one for national security, one for intelligence and a police force.

The Palestinian side is reportedly thinking in terms of six separate services.—AFP