A suspected Palestinian suicide bomber killed at least 17 people and wounded more than 75 at a Tel Aviv nightclub last night in the worst attack against Israelis since a Palestinian uprising erupted last September, police reported.
The blast at a club in a seaside complex along a beachfront promenade lined with palm trees caused carnage. Women wept and young victims lay groaning on the ground being comforted by rescue workers. Pools of blood covered the pavement.
"A man with explosives on him blew himself up at the entrance to the club and caused many casualties," Tel Aviv police chief Yossi Setbon told Israeli Radio. Dozens of people were taken to hospital and many were in a serious condition. The blast at the Pacha nightclub took place shortly before midnight.
"I was about to enter (the nightclub) and heard the boom. I was thrown back and fell on the ground. Bodies and body parts were all around me. I can only be ashamed of this country," Mr Rotem, an 18year-old witness, said.
Mr Avi, a waiter from a nearby nightclub, said: "There were people blown apart, limbs strewn everywhere."
Many of the victims had been enjoying a night out on the Jewish Sabbath. After the blast, a long line of ambulances stood in the road, their lights flashing.
CNN later reported that Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack. The scene at the nightclub was a sharp contrast to the events earlier in the day in Jerusalem, when the funeral of a senior Palestinian official passed off without major violence.
Faisal Husseini, the Palestinian leader who symbolised his people's claim to sovereignty in Jerusalem, was buried yesterday amid scenes that underlined Palestinian nationalist fervour and passion for control here.
Mr Husseini, who died in Kuwait on Thursday of a heart attack, was buried after funeral ceremonies that lasted all day in a small cemetery atop the Temple Mount where his father, a military commander who died fighting against Israel in 1948 was also laid to rest.
In the heat of a steamy afternoon, Israel essentially relinquished control of parts of the eastern half of the Holy City, where the Palestinians seek to establish the capital of an independent state. It allowed convoys of West Bank Palestinians to enter the city with the coffin - which was draped with a Palestinian flag, covered with flowers, and transported on the back of a flat-bed truck. And it tacitly enabled plain-clothed Palestinian security officials to police the estimated 20,000 mourners as they later accompanied the coffin from Mr Husseini's PLO headquarters building, the Orient House, to the hallowed ground alongside the al-Aksa mosque for burial.
President George W Bush called on President Arafat to condemn "the heinous terrorist attack" in Israel and to implement an immediate cease-fire.
In a strongly worded statement that appeared to hold Mr Arafat responsible for the latest suicide bombing nightclub, Mr Bush said the attack illustrated "the urgent need for an immediate, unconditional cessation of violence".
"I call upon Chairman Arafat to condemn this act and to call for an immediate cease-fire," Mr Bush said. "There is no justification for senseless attacks against innocent civilians.
"I condemn in the strongest terms the heinous terrorist attack in Tel Aviv this Sabbath evening," Mr Bush said in a statement released by the White House.