THE MIDDLE EAST: Only extraordinary good fortune prevented what experts said could have been "a mega-blast" at Israel's main fuel distribution centre yesterday morning.
An explosive device attached to the underside of a fuel tanker was detonated by remote control, set the tanker ablaze, but did not set the fuel alight.
It would have been "a huge disaster," the Tel Aviv police chief, Mr Yossi Sedbon, said.
Intelligence chiefs warned that the blast, at the Pi Glilot depot just north of Tel Aviv, underlined the determination of Palestinian militants to carry out "massive terrorist attacks".
Last week, the Knesset was told that members of an arrested Palestinian cell had plotted to blow up Israel's tallest skyscrapers.
The depot was immediately closed down and its operators scrambled to introduce new security measures.
An intelligence report submitted to the government five months ago had identified Pi Glilot as a prime target for attack.
The report had warned that an explosion at the depot - where huge quantities of fuel are stored - could cause a fireball which would kill almost everybody on the adjacent major roads and thousands of people in nearby residential areas.
Officials believe that the device was attached to the tanker as it stood in an unguarded car-park overnight.
Although vehicles are checked as they enter the depot, the explosives were well hidden.
The device was detonated as the tanker took on fuel alongside several other tankers, a short distance from the main storage tanks.
The tanker caught fire, but the blaze was swiftly extinguished and fuel leaking from it did not catch alight.
The driver said the force of the blast was immense and that "some of the other drivers fled in hysteria".
Israel's Defence Minister, Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, warned that, as was the situation before April's Israeli military offensive in the West Bank, the country was facing "waves of suicide-bombers" and other attackers.
Outside Nablus, two Palestinians died yesterday in a mysterious explosion, apparently when preparing a bomb.
Israeli troops in Gaza arrested a Palestinian carrying a suicide-bomber's belt and additional explosives.
Last night in Gaza, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian, who, the army said, was throwing hand-grenades at them.