A JIHAD GROWS IN BROOKLYN

LINDA SARSOUR whose driver pummeled him and held him for the police. By Middle Eastern standards, it was an unsophisticated attack, although it could not have been better timed to disrupt the peace talks.

No group claimed responsibility. Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the leader of the militant Islamic organization Hamas, said he did not know if his group was responsible, since, he said, its political and military wings are separate. But he endorsed the attack in spirit. ''The occupation exists, the resistance continues and this is a link in a chain,'' he said.

About a third of the wounded were uniformed soldiers and military students on their way back to a nearby army base and school after a weekend break. Like the civilians, commuters and bus station employees, most suffered superficial but painful shrapnel wounds. At noontime they lay surrounded by flowers, relatives and army buddies at the Soroka Hospital here, many with cellular phones tucked by their sides. All wore tags with their victim numbers, which had been chalked into the asphalt at the bus station, marking where they had fallen.

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