TEL AVIV, Nov 21: Eleven people were killed and 50 injured in occupied Al Quds on Thursday when a Palestinian militant blew himself up on a crowded bus in the first suicide bombing in Israel since the start of a general election campaign.

The explosion ripped through a bus packed with commuters during the morning rush hour.

“There was a huge explosion... I fell to the floor,” said Yitzhak Cohen, a middle-aged passenger. “Around me there were bodies everywhere, some of them lying one on top of the other.”

Passers-by raced to help the victims, many of them burned, bloodied and sobbing.

Police said the bomber, identified by Hamas as a 23-year-old man from the Bethlehem area, was sitting at the front of the bus when he detonated his explosive belt.

The Hamas claimed responsibility for the bombing and vowed more attacks. It said it was avenging Israel’s assassination of its military leader in an air strike in Gaza in July that also killed one of his aides and 14 civilians.

Meeting on the sidelines of a NATO summit in the Czech Republic, US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair condemned the bombing.

“It is clear that those who want to use terror to stop any process for peace are still active. In order to achieve peace all countries in the region must take responsibility, do their best to fight off terror,” Bush said.

The latest attack and Israeli military raids threaten to undermine US efforts to achieve calm in the region while it seeks Arab support for an invasion of Iraq.

The bombing was the first in Israel since Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called a snap election after his broad coalition government collapsed earlier this month, setting the stage for voters to make a clear choice between hawks and doves.

Opinion polls show Sharon’s Likud party, boosted by the Israeli public’s turn to the right, widely favoured to defeat the centre-left Labour Party.

In deciding his response, Sharon faces the added complication of a Likud vote next Thursday to decide whether he or his more hawkish challenger, former premier Binyamin Netanyahu, will lead the party in the election. —Reuters