A Palestinian suicide bomber killed five people in a crowded market in an Israeli coastal city today in the first such attack since Israel's pullout from Gaza last month.
Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the bombing, saying it was avenging Israel's killing of a top West Bank commander on Monday.
Israel has been on edge amid violence in and around the Gaza Strip in one of the worst flare-ups since an Israeli withdrawal from the territory on September 12th after 38 years of occupation.
The bomber blew up in front of a sandwich stand in the main outdoor market in Hadera, a frequent target of attacks in a 5-year-old Palestinian uprising. Medics said five people were killed and 30 wounded in the blast, which blew out shop windows and shattered nearby parked cars.
It was the first bombing inside the Jewish state since Augugust 28th, when a suicide attacker wounded 20 people in Beersheba. Israeli officials noted that the Hadera attack followed remarks in Tehran by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, carried by the official IRNA news agency on Wednesday, that Israel should be "wiped off the map".
"What makes these people dangerous is that their violent language is transformed into violent action," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the bombing and pledged to try to salvage the truce he had engineered.
"It harms the interest of the Palestinian people and leads to expansion of the cycle of violence," he said in a statement.
The bloodshed has threatened to unravel an already shaky ceasefire and cast a shadow over international hopes of a revival of peacemaking since the Gaza pullout.