An attack by a Palestinian suicide bomber in a grocery store in northern Israel has killed the shop's owner.
This morning's attack blast in the farming community of Sdeh Trumot coincided with failed efforts by Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas to persuade militants to call a truce with Israel and preceded a Middle East visit by US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
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"He was carrying a bag. He looked me in the eye and then blew up," a witness told Israeli Army Radio, describing the explosion at the entrance to a grocery store opening for business in the early morning."He touched several bottles of wine near the door and waitedonly ten seconds before going inside and blowing up. Theneverything flew towards me."
Medics said the owner of the grocery store was wounded in the blast and died in a hospital emergency room. The bomber also died. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack east of the West Bank city of Jenin.
Meeting leaders of the Hamas group in the Gaza Strip yesterday, Mr Abbas made little headway in his efforts to persuade them to call a truce with Israel despite what security sources said was Israeli agreement to curb attacks on militants.
Palestinian leaders dismissed the Israeli gesture to stop "track-and-kill" operations as meaningless, underlining the difficulties Mr Powell will face on a trouble-shooting mission to the region tomorrow.
He will try to rescue the "road map" to Israeli-Palestinian peace battered by the latest violence in which more than 50 people on both sides have been killed since a Middle East summit in Aqaba, Jordan, on June 4th.