suicide bomb has hit a crowded shopping area in the Israeli commercial capital, Tel Aviv, killing at least four people including the bomber. Police say the attacker detonated about 5kg of explosives in a shop in the busy Carmel market. Israeli TV showed chaotic scenes at the city's central Carmel market as the injured were rushed to hospital. A spokesman for the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said it had carried out the attack. He named the bomber as Amer al-Fahr, from the Askar refugee camp near the West Bank town of Nablus.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat condemned the bombing, as well as "killing on both sides", from his hospital bed in Paris, where he is currently undergoing tests for a blood ailment, his aide Nabil Abu Rdainah said. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman David Saranga, quoted by AFP news agency, urged the Palestinian Authority to crack down on armed militants. And Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN envoy in the region, said the authority should "act without delay against those organising and perpetrating terror and to bring them to justice". A spokesman from Islamic militant group Hamas, Sami Abu Zuhri, told the Associated Press the blast was evidence that the "resistance is alive". |
