Torn legs and backpacks

At 8.28 am Sunday morning, the sharp blast followed by rolling thunder of an already familiar horror sent me swiftly out of my apartment and running 400 meters (yards) down the road to the scene of Jerusalem's latest "suicide" bus bombing.

It was the 29th such attack in Israel's capital in the past three-and-a-half years.

I have been on the scene of more than I care to remember, the last time just a kilometer away from here, on January 29, when 11 people had their lives cut short by a comrade of today's killer.

Usually though, I have been held far back by the men and women of the security and rescue services, at least until the initial cleanup is done.

Not this morning.

I was on the scene within minutes, and saw the first ambulance crew already working on a victim before a policeman waved me back, unimpressed by my government-issued journalist credentials.

A middle-aged man walked slowly toward me, supporting a woman who may have been his wife. The man's face was gray, his companion's white, her facial muscles shuddering uncontrollably at what she had clearly just seen.

Intimately acquainted with the neighborhood I have called home for five years, I quickly weaved my way through the disused and fenced off Jerusalem Train Station and came, unhindered, to within four feet of the bus.

The now dismembered green and white public transporter had left a stop five meters down the road, and was waiting at a traffic light when the Arab man from the town of Jesus' birth detonated the bomb belt strapped to his body.

Its shockwave knocked an elderly resident of a cottage - the only occupied house in the railway property - out of her bed. An attendant at a gas station across the way was momentarily convinced that another earthquake had struck. (A moderate quake rocked Jerusalem and the whole country 11 days before.)

The place was filling up rapidly with rescue and police personnel. Mounted policemen cantered past and took up crowd-controlling positions across the road. Red and black police barrier tape was quickly stretched across all roads leading up to the site. Journalists waving their IDs were not allowed to get near.

For a while I, alone, was the only non-official person able to take in the detail of it all.

Doing what they always do to Israeli buses, the bomb blew out windows and doors, concaving the ceiling, ripping off the overhead air conditioning units, and slashing, hacking, burning and pulverizing those whose bodies absorbed the blast.

With 62 others wounded, it must have been a pretty packed bus. And not surprisingly - given the icy winds slicing through the streets of the capital this morning.

While those gusts had almost immediately dissipated the fireball's smoke, they made my stomach heave as they carried, straight to my nose the sickening stench of eight freshly butchered bodies.

Before me lay a corpse - I think a man's - crumpled and twisted, half on the pavement, half on the road. Its head - or the place where its head would have been - was rammed under the chassis, in front of the right rear wheel.

Perhaps it was the bomber's. I subsequently heard he had boarded the bus through the rear door - a door that was now nowhere to be seen. On the other hand, these attacks usually completely tear the killer apart. So maybe it was a passenger blown out of the window, or a pedestrian caught while walking by?

As my mind played strangely with these theories, I saw, a meter away, a naked, pale white leg, severed below the knee, toes curled, with shattered bones and blood vessels protruding from the gaping wound. The road around the bus was splotched with pieces of shredded flesh. Other, unrecognizable body parts, congealed on the hard, cold ground.

The yawning rear doorway revealed more orange, yellow and red flesh, lumps of bodies in the aisle between the seats. Near the front door, a portable pink cassette player lay on its side. Forensic personnel in white coveralls, dark red cloth booties covering their shoes and pink-stained disposable gloves shielding their hands, picked their way through the mix of metal and human debris.

A friend who also knew about my vantage point joined me unexpectedly, and police called us to open the gate to the enclosure where we stood. They were working on the lock with bolt-cutters when I returned seconds later with the cottage owner and her key.

Sappers and a dog-sniffing team hurried to check the ground I was standing on, moving me back to the cottage balcony, where the landlady allowed me to stay.

Ambulances, meat-wagons, car-lifters, police cars, jeeps, a fire truck and a bus towing vehicle had meanwhile crammed the road - both sides of which border on tranquil green city parks. A solitary police chopper beat the air high overhead.

With the removal of the last of the wounded, the crescendo of high and piercing, and low and wailing sirens finally died down. Most camera crews were still being held at bay as the police and cleanup services got down to moving the dead bodies and remains, laying them side-by-side on the pavement.

One camera crew - a still photographer and a TV cameraman - were allowed in. They were from Israel's Foreign Ministry, which following the previous Jerusalem bus attack posted on the Internet graphic images of the aftermath. Their purpose: to shock a world that has remained largely untouched and uncaring as around 1000 Jews have been murdered by "Palestinian" terrorists over the past three-and-a-half years.

Before me now a new drama was playing out - a rendition of the often experienced conflict between police wishing to protect a crime scene, and reporters doing their job of getting the news out as quickly as possible.

Three photojournalists darted up to the fence in front of us, pushing their long lenses through the bars above the corpses and snapping away, as cries of indignation went up from the rescue workers. A single policeman entered the enclosure and tried to drive the photographers away - to no avail. Eventually the police taped off the scene, forcing the reporters to leave.

Still I could stay, and watched now as police passed objects through the back window frame of the bus. A shredded shirt - it's frightening how a bomb blast can rip of people's clothes - some books, bags, and at least five children's backpacks, pink and blue and red.

As one officer gingerly (tenderly?) searched through the school bags, I wondered about the mothers and fathers who had packed their kids' lunches just a little while before, and who must have been frantically trying to get news of their loved little ones after hearing that horrible sound.

My cell phone rang. It was my best friend - a half-Dutch, half-Arab Christian boy who has devoted his life to Israel and serves in the IDF. He had heard that the attack took place near my home, and wanted to ensure my family was okay.

Had the blast occurred at the same time on Monday morning instead of Sunday, my wife and our two youngest boys could have been standing right next to the bus, waiting, too, for a green light to continue on their way to playschool.

I know this may sound like excessive personalization of this attack, but these acts of terrorism have ever-widening concentric circles. Many I know have been directly and indirectly caught up in them over the past years. The wife of the Christian friend who called me has lost a member of her family.

It seems to get closer all the time...

Reporters were now flooding the place - time for me to go. I knew I would see the rest of the scene better on TV at home.

Back in my office I listen - surprisingly still astonished after all these years - as straight-faced news anchors report that the Palestinian Authority of arch-murderer Yasser Arafat has condemned the attack.

As with the January 29 attack, it was an Arafat-man who perpetrated the outrage. A member of his Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades had walked into Jerusalem from Bethlehem - through a place where Israel's security fence has not yet been built.

The security fence will dominate our news this week, as the International Court of Justice in The Hague presumes to rule on whether or not Israel has the right to build that barrier and so protect its men, women and children from these internationally-supported barbarians who live to die - killing Jews.

Now I watch the mangled bus being slowly towed from the scene. The firemen will spray away blood and gore, and in an hour traffic will again flow unimpeded, most drivers unaware of the spot they're crossing on this busy Jerusalem road.

Another week in Israel has begun.