Word: bus
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...pattern of random terror continued for nearly 30 miles. Witnesses said the gunmen fired machine guns and threw grenades at passing cars from the hijacked bus. Some passengers inside the bus were fired on, and at least one body was dumped along the way. An American youth who was driving from Tel Aviv to Haifa with his family reported seeing "a car standing on the other side of the highway and a body lying near by. Moments later," he said, "I saw a bus zigzagging toward our side of the highway. When we came close it stopped. Somebody came down...
Farther down the highway, the commandeered bus met another bus, also heading toward Haifa. The terrorists stopped this bus too, and forced its passengers to crowd onto the first one. The hostages now numbered 71, and the police were on the trail. The bus approached one hastily erected checkpoint and careened right through it. Then, just outside Tel Aviv, police set up a roadblock, seeded the highway with nails, and positioned themselves alongside. There the wild trail of terror finally came to an end. By that time, reported TIME Correspondent David Halevy, who was the only reporter on the scene...
There had not been time to order in Israel's crack antiterrorist squads. So the task of stopping the terrorists fell to some 30 traffic cops, armed only with .38 revolvers and UZI submachine guns. When the bus finally skidded into a ditch with all its tires flat, the police rushed it. Said Arza Tazor, 24, a passenger: "I remember police breaking the windows of the bus and telling us to jump. I jumped...
Passenger Shamir said he took the pistol of one of the terrorists lying near him, apparently wounded, and shot two others who were firing from the front of the bus at the police outside. "Meanwhile," he said, "another terrorist behind me fired at me and my daughter. The terrorists near me took out four hand grenades and dropped them in the bus. I shouted: 'Escape! Escape!' The bus was in flames. My daughter was hit again. Outside, there was a terrorist who was firing at everybody who was escaping from the bus. A few managed to escape. Some...
TIME's Halevy managed to get past the Israeli guards and observe the shooting and explosions at first hand. Reports he: "I finally got close enough to the bus to see at least five bodies burning inside. The rear windows were blasted out and the barrel of a machine-gun was poking out. A child aged seven or eight was lying on the asphalt, a bullet hole in its head. Three women in a nearby ditch screamed for help. I helped them limp to waiting ambulances. A young couple emerged from the ditch screaming, 'We had two children...