Jerusalem Suicide Blast Kills 10

A suicide bomber blew up on a bus in Jerusalem on Thursday, killing at least 10 bystanders and wounding about 50 in an attack outside Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's official residence, police and paramedics said. The prime minister wasn't in the area.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The explosion coincided with a German-brokered prisoner swap between Israel and the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah. It was not clear whether there was a connection.

The long-negotiated prisoner swap took place despite the carnage in Jerusalem, reports CBS News correspondent David Hawkins. Israel released more than 400 prisoners in exchange for an Israeli businessman and the bodies of three dead soldiers killed on the border of Lebanon three years ago.

The explosion went off just before 9 a.m. in the Rehavia district in downtown Jerusalem, just 15 meters (yards) from Sharon's official residence. Sharon was at his farm in southern Israel at the time, his aides said.

Eli Beer, a paramedic, said victims had been scattered over a wide area.

"There were a lot of heavy injuries, a lot of the people who were injured were in bad condition, a lot of people had missing limbs," he said.

Bret Stephens, editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post, was near the scene at the time of the blast. "There was glass everywhere, human remains everywhere, shoes, feet, pieces of guts. There were pieces of body everywhere," he said.

Stephane Ben Shushan, who owns a chocolate store in the upscale neighborhood, said the bus was moving slowly in heavy traffic when the explosion went off. "It's a real nightmare, you can smell the blood," he said.

The bomber was in the back of the bus when he detonated the explosives, said Jerusalem Police Chief Mickey Levy.

"It was a very serious attack on a bus packed with passengers," Levy said at the scene. "According to what we know at the moment ... we're talking about a suicide bomber."

The green Egged bus was charred, with wires dangling everywhere. One side of the bus had been blown out and the back half of the roof was blown off.

Police investigators with sniffer dogs searched the bus. Paramedics were taking away the wounded on stretchers. Others were treated at the scene. People, dazed and crying, wandered around the area. One crying woman said she had been walking down the street when she heard a loud explosion.

The explosion came just two days after senior Egyptian officials made another attempt to win a pledge from Palestinian militants to halt attacks on Israelis.

The attack was a further setback to international efforts to bring about a resumption of peace talks. Two visiting senior State Department officials, David Satterfield and John Wolf, were meeting with Israel's defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, at the time of the blast.

After the blast, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his foreign minister canceled a planned meeting to help restart peace talks. The meeting was to include Americans, Palestinians and international donors that help fund the Palestinian Authority budget.

The U.S.-led "road map" peace plan has been stalled almost since its inception in June.

Palestinian Authority officials condemned the bombing. "This vicious cycle can only be broken by renewal of a meaningful peace process," said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. "Otherwise, violence will breed violence, bullets will breed bullets."

Sharon's spokesman, Raanan Gissin, said the attack illustrated why Israel is building a contentious separation barrier in the West Bank.

Israel says the structure, which dips deep into the West Bank, is needed to keep suicide bombers out of Israel. But Palestinians have accused Israel of seizing their land. With Palestinian backing, a case challenging the legality of the barrier is to go before the World Court in the Netherlands next month.

Gissin said Israel believes the court has no authority over the matter. "No one has the right to question us and bring us to court on how to defend ourselves," he said.

The last attack in Israel was a suicide bombing at a bus stop outside of Tel Aviv on Dec. 25 that killed four people. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a radical member of the PLO, claimed responsibility for that attack.

Thursday's bombing was the deadliest since a female suicide bomber killed 21 people at a seaside restaurant in Haifa on Oct. 4.

Israel began releasing Palestinian prisoners Thursday as part of a long-awaited swap with Hezbollah after forensic experts confirmed the identities of the remains of three Israeli soldiers at a German air base.

Families waved Hezbollah and Palestinian flags as buses carrying about 145 Palestinian prisoners crossed from Israel into the West Bank at the Tarqumiya checkpoint.

Israel also turned over the remains of 60 Lebanese militants as part of the deal. An Israeli military truck took the bodies to Israel's northern border with Lebanon. Looking like pallbearers, Israeli soldiers carried the coffins one by one and placed the wooden boxes into a Red Cross truck, which then rumbled through a border crossing.

The moves came hours after an Israeli air force jet carrying 36 Arab prisoners and a German air force plane carrying businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum and the three Israeli soldiers touched down before dawn under tight security at a military airport in Cologne.

They taxied into the same hangar and parked side by side, where a team of forensic experts began immediately examining the remains. Security officials in Israel, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that the team positively identified the soldiers' bodies.