Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing
| Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing | |
|---|---|
| Part of the Second Intifada militancy campaign | |
 The attack site
The attack site
The attack site
|
|
| Location | Jerusalem, Israel |
| Coordinates | 31°46′59.37″N 35°13′4.51″E / 31.7831583°N 35.2179194°E |
| Date | 9 August 2001 2:00 pm (IDT) |
| Target | Sbarro pizza restaurant |
|
Attack type
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Suicide bombing |
| Deaths | 15 civilians |
|
Non-fatal injuries
|
130 |
| Perpetrators | Hamas |
The Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing, also called the Sbarro massacre, was a Palestinian terrorist attack on a pizzeria in downtown Jerusalem, Israel on 9 August 2001, in which 15 civilians were killed, including 7 children and a pregnant woman, and 130 wounded.
At the time of the bombing, the Jerusalem branch of the Sbarro pizza restaurant chain was located at the corner of King George Street and Jaffa Road in Jerusalem, one of the busiest pedestrian crossings in the region. The building was built with the same "Pal-Kal" construction technique deemed responsible for the Versailles wedding hall disaster less than three months before. Although not required to do so, owner Noam Amar added extra support columns on the advice of city inspectors.
Ahlam Tamimi, who was charged as an accomplice, scouted for a target before leading Izz al-Din Shuheil al-Masri, the suicide bomber, to the Sbarro restaurant. They arrived just before 2:00 pm, when the restaurant was filled with customers, "dozens of women, children and babies", and pedestrian traffic outside was at its peak. Tamimi departed before Al-Masri, thought to be carrying a rigged guitar case or wearing an explosive belt weighing 5 to 10 kilograms, containing explosives, nails, nuts and bolts, detonated his bomb.
The dead included 13 Israelis, one pregnant American, and one Brazilian, all of them civilians. Additionally, 130 were injured. Chana Nachenberg remains hospitalized, in a permanent vegetative state, more than thirteen years after the attack. She was 31 years old at the time of the bombing. Her daughter, who was not yet 3 years old at the time, was one of the few in the restaurant who came through the disaster unscathed.
Yocheved Shoshan, age 10, was killed, and her 15-year-old sister Miriam was severely injured with 60 nails lodged in her body, a hole in her right thigh, third degree burns on 40 percent of her body, and a ruptured spleen. According to the testimony of their mother, Esther Shoshan:
I was upstairs with one of my daughters. We had wanted to sit downstairs where it's roomy, near the windows, but it was too crowded. Two of my daughters had gone to park the car. Two others, Miriam and Yocheved, went down to the lower level to get our food.
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Wikipedia