BY DANNA HARMAN, HA’ARETZ—
The woman killed in the Jerusalem bombing on Wednesday has been identified as Mary Jane Gardner, a British student in her 50s.
The British Embassy in Israel said Thursday that the woman’s family has been notified of her death.
The woman was critically wounded when a bomb hidden inside a suitcase exploded at a crowded bus stop next to the International Convention Center, opposite the city’s central station. Another 30 people were wounded in the attack.
Rescue services brought her immediately to the emergency room at Hadassah Hospital in Ein Karem, with severe shrapnel wounds throughout her body. The Intensive Care Unit attempted to resuscitate her, but her condition quickly deteriorated, and within an hour were forced to pronounce her death.
The woman was not identified until well into the evening, but documents in her possession had indicated that she was a foreign citizen.
A Hebrew University spokesman told Haaretz that the woman was born and raised in Kenya and lived in Togo before she came to Israel, where she lived in Mevasseret Zion. She was a student at the Home for Bible Translators and Scholars and took courses in Biblical Hebrew and historical geography at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and lived in the dormitories.
This is the third time over the last year that a foreign national has been killed in a terror attack in Israel.
Mani Singmanfon, a 34-year-old Thai worker, was killed in May after a Qassam rocket exploded in the fields at Moshav Nativ Ha’asarah. Christine Logan, a 46-year-old British tourist, was killed in December when stabbed by two Arabs while she was hiking in the hills near Jerusalem.
In August 2006, a 24-year-old Italian tourist was stabbed to death in the Old City of Jerusalem. An Israel Police investigation found that the assailant had thought he was attacking an Israeli citizen.