"It's an attack!" Kuza, 54, shouted at Amit, 26. "We need to get out of here!"

She pushed her daughter through the door just as the bus exploded. Kuza was knocked unconscious. Her daughter landed on the ground, debris ripping into her left shoulder, through her chest and down to her liver.

When Vered Kuza regained consciousness, her feet "were swollen to a ridiculous size." Her daughter was nowhere to be seen.

"Everything was broken," Kuza said, lying in a hospital bed in a Tel Aviv emergency room on Thursday, her feet wrapped in gauze and plastic and a red number two jotted on her forehead. "There were body parts around me. I didn't know what was happening. It was smoking, hellish. It was horrifying."

Kuza was one of 33 Israelis injured in the attack to be flown back to Ben Gurion Airport on Thursday afternoon and sent to hospitals throughout the country, according to the Israel Defense Forces. Her daughter was one of two Israelis who were too seriously injured to make the trip and remained hospitalized in Bulgaria.

The head of the IDF Medical Corps, Itzik Kreis, said that the injured passengers who arrived in Israel "got very good medical care in Bulgaria" and "were less seriously hurt than we expected."

The IDF Medical Corps landed in Bulgaria Wednesday night to tend to the victims and bring them back to Israel. Kreis said that the injuries the corps saw were similar to those suffered by bus bombing victims in Israel.

A plane carrying 70 Israeli tourists in Bulgaria scheduled to fly home on Wednesday night was delayed, but arrived on Thursday.

Seven people died in the attack, which occurred Wednesday at about 5 p.m. The dead included five Israelis, the bus driver and the suicide bomber. Names of those killed were expected to be revealed on Thursday evening after their bodies arrived in Israel.

An airport security camera in Sarafovo revealed that the bomber was a Caucasian man with long hair and a backpack who had been wandering around the area for about an hour. He reportedly was carrying an apparently fake Michigan driver's license.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly accused Iran of sponsoring the attack. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said he had information that the attack was the joint work of the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Iran has denied the allegations.

Soon after the attack, Amit Kuza was taken by paramedics to a hospital in Sofia, Bulgaria's capital. But her mother "sat on the side of the road," unattended for two hours because she was deemed to be in stable condition.

"I had no one to talk to," Vered Kuza said. "I didn't even have a glass of water. They don't know English. It was primitive."

Bulgarian officials told Kuza that her daughter was in Sofia and in a stable condition. But Kuza was not able to speak to her daughter until Thursday morning. Amit was scheduled to fly back to Israel on Thursday evening.

When news of the attack reached Israel, Arik Kuza, Vered's husband, called the Foreign Ministry to find out if his wife and daughter were alive.

"I called 50 times," he said, standing at Vered's bedside. "They put me on hold and I heard music. I waited for hours."

Lying in her hospital bed, she spoke in a calm and even tone. With her daughter scheduled to arrive in a few hours, she felt lucky to be alive.

via jta.org

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