Nicole Schiavi, International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, Nov. 20, 2002

JERUSALEM -- Eleven people were killed and more than 50 wounded when a suicide bomber exploded himself on a bus early Thursday morning.

Thursday morning’s suicide bombing on bus number 20 - the 85th such attack during the last two years of fighting - punctured the sunny morning as students headed to school and commuters headed to work.

Children's sandwiches and schoolbooks lay scattered amid and glass shards which covered the street in the suburban, low-income neighborhood.

Shimon Ben Yair was in bed when the blast shook his apartment across the street. He went to the window to survey the scene.

"There were dying people around the bus on the street," he said. "There was smoke, fire, people were screaming. It was like hell."

Ben Yair said that at first he thought it was an earthquake, but "of course we immediately knew it was a terror attack."

"You feel helpless," he said after seeing this devastation in front of his home and the bus stop he waits at every day. "A half hour later I’d be standing there."

The explosion occurred at 7:20 a.m. in the Kiryat Menahem suburb on a crowded bus heading towards the city center. Many of the passengers were children. It was the first deadly bombing in Jerusalem since July 31, when seven people were killed in a bomb attack on a crowded cafeteria at the Hebrew University.

Some of the dead were identified including Hodaya Asaraf, 13, Marina Bazarski, 46, Dakla Zino, 20 and Sima Novak, 56.

The bomber has been identified as Nael Azmi Abu Hilail, 26, from Bethlehem, known to be a supporter of the Islamic Jihad group, although Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. Abu Hilail's family said he left home Wednesday and hadn't returned.

Yoni Klein, who just moved this year to Israel from California, works with children in the neighborhood and knew one of the girls wounded in the attack. He already visited with some children who had friends caught in the bombing and planned to counsel some more students at the junior high school later.

"It’s not easy. It’s part of life here, but you’re always on your feet," he said. "These kind of things don’t really surprise anyone."

Other residents were milling around the scene still in pajamas. Some were protesting, chanting, "Death to Arabs."

"A Palestinian state means only that terrorism is rewarded," said Minister of Internal Security Uzi Landau, who was at the scene of this morning’s terror attack.

Landau said Israel needs to have a tough ongoing intiative to prevent terror rather than random military reactions whenever an atttack does occur.

But witnesses bristled at the politicians at the scene.

"It’s like a game: ‘You explode, we will take the bodies away,’" Ben Yair said, complaining that the familiarity of the scene has desensitized people to the tragedy. "It’s a game, a game that today many children paid the price for."