Israeli tanks and helicopters stormed the West Bank town of Jenin after a massive bomb killed at least 16 people on an Israeli bus and threatened to unleash a new cycle of violence. A car laden with explosives pulled up to the morning rush hour bus and detonated, ripping the two vehicles apart in a ball of flame near Megiddo Junction in northern Israel. Thirty-seven people were reported wounded, eight seriously. The deadliest bombing in at least a month prompted fears of a new resurgence in Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed as America’s CIA chief George Tenet tried to kick-start efforts to beef up security structures. Hours after the blast claimed by the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, some 30 Israeli tanks backed by Apache helicopters streamed into Jenin.
Other important events:
1827 Turks capture the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, after a long siege.
1862 Vietnam cedes the southern part of the country, called Cochinchina, to France.
1882 A cyclone hits Mumbai, India, and drowns 108,000 people.
1885 British establish protectorate over Niger River region, now Nigeria.
1915 Danish women win voting rights.
1933 The US goes off the gold standard.
1945 The Allied Control Commission assumes control of Germany, which is divided into four occupation zones.
1953 Denmark adopts its current constitution.
1967 Israel launches air strikes against Egypt and then pushes into Jordan and Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
1968 US Senator Robert F. Kennedy is shot and wounded in Los Angeles. He dies the following day.
1975 Suez Canal in Egypt reopens to international shipping for first time since 1967.
1979 Seychelles adopts constitution.
1984 Egyptian prime minister Fouad Mohi Al Deen dies of a heart attack in Cairo.
1985 Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou is sworn in for a second term.
1988 Australian Kay Cottee becomes the first woman to sail alone nonstop around the world.
1991 President Chadli Benjedid clamps a state of siege on Algeria for four months.
1997 The first multi-party parliament elections are held in Algeria, but the Islamic party is banned from participating.
1999 Nato and Yugoslav officers meet for the first time in Macedonia to discuss the withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo.
2000 Rebel gunmen demand the resignation of Solomon Islands Prime Minister Bartholomew Ulufa’alu after seizing power in a coup.
2004 Former US president Ronald Reagan dies at 93 after a long struggle with Alzheimer’s disease.
2006 Serbia declares independence from the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro.
2008 Egypt unveils a 4,000-year-old ‘missing pyramid’.
2009 Forty-two children and many others are hurt after a fire engulfs a day care centre in northern Mexico.
2011 Rafael Nadal wins a 10th Grand Slam and equals Bjorn Borg’s record of six French Open titles.
2013 Fifteen commuters are hospitalised and thousands evacuated from the Moscow metro after a high-voltage electric cable caught fire.
2015 Former Iraqi foreign minister Tareq Aziz dies in Nasiriyah, Iraq.
