19 fatalities from Jerusalem bus bomb identified

The Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir in Tel Aviv had by Thursday morning identified 19 of the 20 fatalities in Tuesday night's suicide bombing on a bus in the heart of an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Jerusalem.

The U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv said Wednesday night that five of the dead were American citizens. The as-yet unidentified woman was a foreign worker from Thailand.

More than 110 were wounded in the attack, 40 of them children, when a Hamas bomber detonated a five-kilogram device packed with ball-bearings on a crowded bus returning from prayers at the Western Wall.

"It's one of the worst terrorist attacks both because of the large number of victims and the difficulty of identifying them, and because among the victims are children," Professor Yehuda Hiss, Israel's chief pathologist, told Israel Radio on Wednesday.

As of Thursday morning, there were still 33 people hospitalized due to the blast. Nine of the wounded were in serious or very serious condition, Israel Radio reported.

The wounded include seven children who sustained head and lung injuries. One little girl had lost an eye, doctors said.

	Ultra-Orthodox children lighting candles Wednesday at the scene of Tuesday night's suicide bombing in Jerusalem. (AP)