Roadblock-Crasher Killed In Israel

Israeli security forces flooded downtown Jerusalem on Monday, taking up prominent positions on sidewalks and rooftops a day after the latest bomb attack. Israel's government weighed a response, though said it wasn't sure of the political affiliation of the female bomber.

Israeli officials said the wide police deployment brought a swift end to an incident Monday in which a Palestinian was shot dead on the outskirts of Tel Aviv after driving his car through a roadblock and running down and injuring an Israeli soldier and policeman.

Reuters Two-Time Terror Survivor A New Yorker who survived the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center escaped with his life again Sunday when a bomb blast ripped through a busy street in Jerusalem. Mark Sokolow, his wife Rina and daughters Jamie and Lauren all suffered minor injuries in a bombing that Israeli police said was carried out by a Palestinian woman. Two people were killed and dozens injured. Visiting relatives in Israel, Sokolow, of Woodmere, N.Y., was standing outside a shoe store with his wife and daughters when the blast shattered windows and sent victims sprawling in the street, the site of several deadly attacks in recent months. "My first thoughts were to find my wife and kids; as soon as the blast went off we were separated," he told CBS News Reporter David Gilbert. "My first thoughts were 'I seem to be alive' and then I wanted to find them." Sokolow said he and Lauren, who was studying in Israel, suffered cuts and bruises, Rina was getting a skin graft to her leg and 13-year-old Jamie was undergoing eye surgery. On Sept. 11, Sokolow was working on the 38th floor of the World Trade Center's south tower when the first hijacked airliner slammed into the north tower. His office was evacuated and he escaped unharmed before the second plane hit the south tower. "I think I was pretty much over the other one in the Twin Towers," he said. "This one I think is going to be more difficult because we have physical injuries here" and because it involved his family. "We actually changed our travel plans after Sept. 11 specifically to come to Israel as a family to be together...in order to support Israel and eradicate terrorism wherever it comes from," he added.

"A driver in a car who had apparently broken through a roadblock reached Ramat Gan," near Tel Aviv, said police spokesman Gil Kleiman. "He ran over a policemen and dragged him several meters. Police from the nearby police station ran out and shot him."

Police said they suspected the Arab, shot after commandeering a vehicle from an elderly Israeli couple, was a Palestinian who had burst through an army West Bank roadblock into Israel in another vehicle earlier in the day.

Israeli media reports said it was possible the man was a car thief but Kleiman said: "We're looking at it as a terrorist attack."

Local police blocked off the car's escape route and shot the driver dead after he tried to do a U-turn in the middle of the street.

The incident followed three Palestinian attacks in Israeli cities in the past week after Israeli forces killed a Palestinian militant. A Palestinian gunman also killed six Israelis at a banquet hall in northern Israel on January 17.

Police said the body of the Palestinian woman student was so badly blown apart that the forensic evidence may not indicate whether she was carrying out a suicide attack, or if she intended to plant the bomb.

"We know that she was either holding (explosives) or had something on her," Kleiman said. "We still don't know for sure that she was a suicide bomber."

If she had the explosives strapped to her body, it would suggest a suicide attack, while if she was carrying the bomb, she may have intended to plant it.

If it was a suicide attack, it would be the first one carried out by a woman in the current Mideast conflict.

There is at least one previous case of a Palestinian female suicide bomber. In 1985, when Israel had troops in south Lebanon, a 16-year-old Palestinian schoolgirl drove a car bomb into an Israeli army checkpoint, killing herself and two soldiers.

The paper said Israeli security is rethinking its profile of potential suicide bombers. Until recently, most were young, single, uneducated Palestinians. "Lately we are seeing older, married men and now a woman," the paper wrote.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for Sunday's attack, but Israel said it held Arafat ultimately responsible.

Arafat is "encouraging terrorism, he's sending (attackers) to Jerusalem," said Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "We will continue to systematically dismantle the terrorist infrastructure."

The Palestinian leadership, meanwhile, "strongly condemned the suicide attack" and called on President Bush to send Mideast envoy Anthony Zinni back to the region.

The blast next to a shoe shop blew out shop windows, set a store on fire and left victims sprawled on the pavement amid shards of glass, pieces of fruit, shoes and storefront mannequins.

"It sounded like half the street exploded," said Hama Gidon, a clothing store worker who was slightly injured. "All the mannequins went flying and I did too. People were falling, glass was flying everywhere."

More than 100 people were treated on the spot or taken to hospitals, though most suffered only from shock. Three people were seriously hurt and nine had moderate injuries, officials said.

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