She was a 19-year-old soldier riding a public bus in northern Israel when she noticed the slow-moving car ahead of her on June 5, 2002. The bus passed the car as it approached the Megiddo Junction.

Then, Mordechay said Tuesday, the bus exploded.

``All of a sudden I found myself in some sort of a whirlpool,'' she said.

The car had crashed into the bus, triggering a huge explosion that sent it spinning. The bus rolled over once before coming to a stop upright. The blast killed 17 people and injured 45.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.

Mordechay was among five Israelis to testify about the attack Tuesday in the terror-support trial of Sami Al-Arian and three other men accused of helping finance and organize the Islamic Jihad.

The men are not accused of helping plan this or any other Islamic Jihad attack, nor is there evidence they knew about it in advance, but prosecutors say their assistance helped the Islamic Jihad wage terror.

Telephone calls secretly intercepted by the FBI show three of the defendants discussing the attack.

Hatim Fariz asks Al-Arian whether he ``heard the world news.''

``You sound chipper!'' Al-Arian responds.

Fariz talked about it again with fellow defendant Ghassan Ballut two days later.

``I said this was well- planned,'' Ballut said. ``They did not expect it.''

``Of course,'' Fariz responded. ``They only make cake with feeling, man! Cake with dates and sesame seeds.''

``Cake'' is a coded reference to a bomb and ``dates and sesame seeds'' represent shrapnel, FBI case agent Kerry Myers has testified.

Assaf Sharabi, a bombing victim, testified about surgeries he endured to remove shrapnel.

Later, an Israeli bomb technician testified that he found cut rebar that was used as shrapnel in the bomb.

Sharabi said the blast knocked him out and that he didn't immediately realize he had been in a terrorist attack when he came to. He felt the heat from the flames engulfing the bus, he said, and crawled out of a hole in the side.

His leg was destroyed, with muscle ripped off the calf. Doctors had to use skin grafts weeks later just to close the wound.

``It's as if the whole thing was torn altogether, from all sides,'' Sharabi said.

Defense attorneys objected to government use of graphic pictures from the attack, but U.S. District Judge James Moody admitted them into evidence.

Prosecutors say they left out the most gruesome images but did show jurors the bodies of two soldiers lying on the road.

Khaled Zoubi, an Israeli police supervisor, witnessed the attack while stopped at a nearby red light. He saw the small car crash into the bus and then blow up.

The car flew past the bus, landing in a heap of blackened metal.

Zoubi and another police officer blocked traffic and then ran to the bus as flames engulfed it. They pulled people off the bus and moved them to the side of the road.

He saw ``people without hands, legs, body limbs, livers, hearts and all kinds of body parts.''

Defense attorneys did not ask questions of the Megiddo Junction witnesses in cross- examination.

Later, an Israeli bank manager provided documents showing Al-Arian sent four $2,000 wire transfers to Mercantile Discount Bank in Tel Aviv in June 1993.

The money went to accounts of four people related to Islamic Jihad members jailed for a February 1992 attack on an Israeli army base that killed three people. The men used an ax, knives and a pitchfork in the attack.

Defense attorney William Moffitt pointed out that Al-Arian did not try to conceal his name on the wire transfer forms.

Reporter Michael Fechter can be reached at (813) 259-7621.