blast kills 8

Police are saying the deadly blast on an Israeli commuter bus near Haifa on Wednesday morning was apparently the work of a suicide bomber who was wearing an explosive belt.

At least eight people were killed and 14 wounded in the blast, according to Israeli medical services.

Ambulances and medical relief teams quickly hustled to the scene with as many as 50 ambulances.

Medics said at least three of the injured are in serious condition.

The paper Ha'aretz is reporting that an Egged bus line official said the bus was the 960 line, an express that links the northern suburbs of Haifa to Jerusalem. Passing cars were reported hit by the blast. The bus was supposed to have been full -- 50 or 55 people on the bus.

The location is five or six miles outside of Haifa.

Eyewitnesses report a great deal of carnage. One man in a car near the bus said victims were strewn over a large area.

Ha'aretz, reporting from Israel Radio, quotes an eyewitness, Yitzhak Rotman: "To my regret, the sight is horrible. There are many dead bodies, some outside the bus, some inside ... The bus is shattered, from one end to the other."

Haifa was the site of a suicide bombing on March 31. In that blast, 14 people died when a suicide bomber detonated himself in a crowded restaurant.

Izzedine al Qassam, the armed wing of the Hamas militant group, claimed responsibility for the March 31 attack and identified the bomber as a man from Jenin, a town in the West Bank.

Hamas is a Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist organization that the U.S. State Department has labeled as a terrorist organization. The military wing has admitted responsibility for terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and well as attacks against the Israeli military.