Two die in suicide bus bomb
Two Palestinians aged 12 and 18 were also killed, during an Israeli army raid in the southern Gaza Strip, witnesses and hospital sources said.
The suicide bombing, on a highway east of Tel Aviv, and the army raid in Gaza were sure to fuel tensions and cause alarm in the US as it seeks Arab support for a possible war on Iraq.
In the first suicide bombing in three weeks, the attacker detonated his explosives after he tried to board a bus along a highway near a stop popular with Israeli soldiers.
“The driver opened the door to treat the suicide bomber like any passenger, together with another man, and then they noticed that he was an armed man with a bomb belt,” Tel Aviv Police Commander Yossi Sedbon told Army Radio.
“They held his hands, told everyone to disperse, and then they ran away. He got up...and walked about 30 metres from the bus toward the south, and then blew himself up.”
Hospital sources said a woman was killed in the blast near Israel’s commercial capital.
The bombing followed four days of violence in the Gaza Strip in which 20 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces during raids which the army says are intended to rein in militants but which the Palestinians say have included many civilian casualties. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the suicide bombing, although the militant group Hamas has vowed to avenge the deaths in Gaza.
“These attacks are a response to massacres by the occupation against our innocent civilians. The occupation must not go unpunished for its raids and massacres in (the Gaza Strip),” a senior Hamas leader, Ismail Abu Shanab, said.
David Baker, an official in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s office, said Israel was fighting a “continuous battle” against “Palestinian terror”.
Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat condemned the killing of civilians, “whether Palestinians or Israelis”.
“We hold Prime Minister Sharon responsible for the current escalation,” he said.
The previous suicide bombing in Israel was on September 19, when a Palestinian attacker blew himself up in a bus in central Tel Aviv, killing at least five people. That prompted a 10-day Israeli siege of President Yasser Arafat’s headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, during which most of his base was destroyed.
Mr Sharon has vowed to keep up the pressure on Gaza-based militants following a tank and helicopter raid on Monday in which 16 people were killed. That raid drew international condemnation and concern in Washington, where Mr Sharon is expected to hold talks next week with President Bush.
In the latest violence in Gaza, Palestinian gunmen exchanged fire with soldiers patrolling the edge of the Rafah refugee camp near the border with Egypt. The army said it was checking the reports that its forces had killed two Palestinians aged 18 and 12.
The clashes broke out when Israeli tanks and troops entered Rafah in an incursion which the army said targeted militants.
