ISLAMABAD: A US-Israeli woman has died after 22 years in a coma due to injuries sustained in a Palestinian suicide bombing at a pizza restaurant in Jerusalem.
According to the BBC, Chana Nachenberg was 31 years old at the time of the Sbarro pizza attack, which killed 15 people, including seven children and a pregnant woman. She is the third US citizen to die as a result of the August 2001 bombing. The US is requesting that Jordan extradite a woman convicted by Isreal of murder for her role in the incident.
In 2003, an Israeli court sentenced Ahlam Tamimi, born in the occupied West Bank and holds Jordanian citizenship, to 16 life sentences. She was released in 2011 as part of a deal to rescue an Israeli soldier held captive by Palestinian Hamas militants in Gaza for more than five years. Tamimi helped bomber Izz al-Din Shuheil al-Masri in carrying out the attack. She settled in Jordan after her release and has shown delight in her role in the atrocity.
Tamimi is on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list, and the United States claims it seeks her extradition on allegations of conspiring to use a weapon of mass devastation against Americans. Jordan’s High Court previously denied a request. For years, the parents of one of the two other US citizens killed in the attack, Malki Roth, who was 15 then, have lobbied the US to do more to effect Tamimi’s extradition.
Tamimi and Masri, both Hamas members, entered the Sbarro restaurant on August 9 at a busy intersection in the centre of west Jerusalem. Tamimi, who had chosen the target, had already left when Masri blew himself up. Aside from those deceased, approximately 130 people were injured.It was one of several suicide bombs carried out by Hamas during the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israel that began the previous year and ended in 2005.
