TEL AVIV, April 12: She saw the police, so the young suicide bomber turned away from Jerusalem’s main open air market on Friday and waited nearby for a bus instead.

Shoppers were racing against the clock to buy food before the market closed for the start of the Jewish sabbath at dusk.

At the bus stop on Jaffa Road, the Palestinian blew herself up, killing at least six people and wounding dozens of others.

“It sounded like a mountain exploded. The ground was moving. People ran away, screaming,” a municipal worker, who identified himself only as Gilad, told Reuters.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, on a mission to end 18 months of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed, had a bird’s-eye view of the immediate aftermath.

He was in an Israeli military helicopter heading for an aerial tour of the tense Israel-Lebanon border and diverted to hover over the scene of the bombing.

Bodies were strewn across the street and the shattered glass from shop windows glinting in the sunlight painted a familiar picture of death in the Jerusalem afternoon. “(The bomber) tried to enter (the market), but police were stationed there. She wasn’t able to get in and blew herself up when a bus stopped to pick up passengers,” Jerusalem police chief Mickey Levy said.—Reuters