Ramat Eshkol bus bombing

On the morning of August 21, 1995, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive device aboard a commuter bus passing through the Ramat Eshkol neighborhood of East Jerusalem. The attack occurred at approximately 7:45 a.m., a time when the bus was carrying many passengers on their way to work or study, including policemen heading to national police headquarters and summer students traveling to the Mount Scopus campus of Hebrew University.

The bombing killed five people, including the bomber, and wounded more than one hundred others. The Palestinian Islamist militant organization Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. According to available reporting, the explosive device used in the bombing was designed by Yahya Ayyash, and the suicide bomber has been identified as Sufian Jabarin.

Among those killed was an American teacher from Connecticut who had traveled to Israel to gather material for classes she taught on Israeli history. Another victim was left paralyzed from the neck down as a result of injuries sustained in the attack. This individual remained dependent on a respirator for the remainder of his life and died in 2005, a decade after the bombing.

The attack took place against a backdrop of a wave of suicide bombings attributed to Hamas and other militant groups in Israel during the mid-1990s, a period marked by ongoing violence connected to the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict. No individuals have been named in available sourcing as having been charged, convicted, exonerated, or acquitted in connection with this specific attack beyond identification of the bomber, who died in the course of carrying out the bombing.