A suicide bomber blew himself up and wounded at least 15 people, including one seriously, at a restaurant north of Tel Aviv tonight as tensions rose with the seizure by Israeli forces of the deputy leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Abdul Rahim Mallouh, in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
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An Israeli policeman stands next to the body of a suspected Palestinian suicide bomber who blew himself up at a restaurant in the Israeli coastal town of Herzliya June 11, 2002, killing himself and wounding nine people. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
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Israeli police spokesman Gil Kleiman said the suicide bomb was detonated at the entrance to the Jamil restaurant, a small felafel restaurant in a popular downtown area in the town of Herzliya.
"He blew himself up outside the restaurant. He was killed on the spot," said Kleiman, adding that 15 people were wounded, one seriously. Israeli radio said the badly hurt victim was a teenage girl.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, the first suicide attack since a car bomb killed 17 Israelis on a bus in northern Israel on June 5th. The bomber was not immediately identified.
The Palestinian Authority denounced the bombing, saying it "rejects and condemns all operations against civilians in Israel. "These operations give the Israeli government a reason to strike at our people, and the international community stays silent," the Authority said in a statement.
But an official of the radical Palestinian Islamic group Hamas, without claiming the attack, said the latest bombing was a "natural response to Israeli crimes."
The blast came as Israeli troops arrested dozens more Palestinians on the second day of a major operation in Ramallah and as three teenage Israeli settlers were wounded by a bomb while waiting for a bus.
Earlier in the day, an eight-year-old Palestinian child was killed and two other boys wounded by Israeli army gunfire in southern Gaza City, near a Jewish settlement
PFLP deputy leader Mallouh, who is also a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), was arrested at his home in the West Bank town
An Israeli army spokeswoman said Mallouh was arrested along with two other men, identified as Mussa Abed and Mohammed Amran. The leader of the PFLP, Ahmed Saadat, whose group claimed the assassination in October of an Israeli cabinet minister, is being held in jail in the West Bank town of Jericho under international guard.
Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo condemned the arrest of Mallouh as a "dangerous precedent." The army spokeswoman said the three arrests brought to 64 the number of Palestinians taken into custody since the Israelis moved back into Ramallah in their largest incursion in weeks.
Also among those arrested was Yussef Tarifi, public prosecutor for the Ramallah area, according to his father, Palestinian minister for civil affairs Jamil Tarifi.
Scores of Israeli tanks and armored vehicles rolled into Ramallah early yesterday, encircled Arafat's headquarters for the second time in four days and imposed a curfew on the town.
Israeli bulldozers used rubble and car wrecks to seal off Arafat's compound already battered by a short but ferocious tank attack Thursday and a five-week siege that ended on May 2.
AFP