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Blast kills 5 Israelis, erodes peace hopes
(AP)
Updated: 2005-10-27 08:47
A 20-year-old Palestinian blacksmith blew himself up at a falafel stand in an
open-air market Wednesday, killing five Israelis and wounding more than 30 in
the deadliest attack in the country in more than three months.
The bombing stifled faint peace hopes following Israel's pullout from the
Gaza Strip. The blast also embarrassed Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who
only hours earlier had scolded militant groups for repeatedly violating a truce.
Palestinian gunmen from four armed factions,
including the Islamic Jihad, speak during a news conference in Gaza
October 26, 2005.[Reuters] | The Islamic Jihad
claimed responsibility, saying the attack was to avenge the killing of its West
Bank leader by Israeli forces this week.
The bomber struck while the market in the central town of Hadera was bustling
a day after being closed for the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah.
After the attack, the bloodied body of a man in his 50's lay on the ground
among scattered fruits and mangled metal shards. Rescue workers covered other
bodies with blankets, walking on pools of blood and shattered glass. A section
of the falafel stand's metal roof hung from a eucalyptus tree high above the
market.
Covered bodies lie on the ground as Israeli
policemen inspect the area of a suicide bomb attack in the Israeli coastal
city of Hadera, some 40 km (25 miles) north of Tel Aviv, Wednesday Oct.
26, 2005. [AP] | Jack Weinberg, a Brooklyn-born
psychologist in Hadera, arrived at the scene shortly after the blast and saw the
wreckage of a car. "If this could happen to a car which is made of metal, I was
afraid of what it could do to a person," he said.
Then Weinberg saw a dismembered body with its face still intact. "It was the
most frightening thing," he said.
The attack came hours after Iran's state-run media reported comments from
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling for Israel to be "wiped off the
map" and saying a new wave of Palestinian attacks would destroy the Jewish
state.
Recalling Iran's history of support for Islamic Jihad, Israeli Foreign
Ministry spokesman Mark Regev criticized both Ahmadinejad's statement and
another from Mahmoud Zahar, a leader of the Hamas militant group in Gaza who
threatened fresh violence against Israel.
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