The Israeli army early on Tuesday entered the Palestinian autonomous town of Jenin in the north of the West Bank, hours after a suicide bomber killed two Israelis in an attack on a shopping mall in a Tel Aviv suburb.
Shooting broke out as Israeli tanks backed up by helicopters rolled into Jenin, Palestinian security officials said. It was not immediately known if there were victims.
On Monday the Palestinian suicide bomber had killed two Israelis, including a toddler, in an attack on a shopping mall in Petah Tiqvah.
The attack came after the army pulled out of the nearby West Bank town of Qalqilya and followed an Israeli re-occupation of Bethlehem, south of Jerusalem, in a sweep for militants that netted
a leader of the hardline group that claimed the blast outside the shopping centre in Petah Tiqvah, northwest of Tel Aviv.
The bomber had ambled up to the terrace of the Bravissimo cafe and detonated his charge at 6:53 pm (1553 GMT), leaving a 18-month-old baby and a 38-year-old woman dead, plus at least 20 injured.
Bloodstains streaked the terrace of the Bravissimo and a baby’s bottle, three quarters full, hauntingly laid on the ground, alongside a potted plant.
The bomber’s mutilated corpse had not been taken from the cafe 45 minutes after the blast where drinks still sat on tables, amid debris and knocked over chairs.
It was the first such attack on the town and the first
successful suicide bombing in Israel since a kamikaze killed two people, plus himself, in Rishon Letsion, a suburb to the south of the coastal city, on May 22.
The bombing occurred hours after Israeli forces ended a 24-hour raid on the West Bank town of Qalqilya — just 10 kilometres north of Petah Tiqvah — which is seen as a launchpad for militants entering Israel to carry out suicide attacks.
A senior Israeli official was quick to blame Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for the attack.
”Yasser Arafat is the chairman of the Palestinian Authority and is directly responsible for the inaction of his security services. He talks about reform but does nothing against terrorism,” said the official.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said: ”Chairman Arafat rejects any Israeli accusation against the Palestinian Authority. We condemn the killing of civilians, be they Palestinians or
Israelis.”
The Palestinian leadership also denounced the blast, saying ”it gives the Israeli army reasons to continue their aggression and occupation.”
The blast was claimed by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Arafat’s Fatah group which has refused to heed the Palestinian leadership’s appeals for an end to attacks on Israeli
civilians.
Jihad Titi, the 18-year-old nephew of Mahmud Titi, a local leader of the Brigades among three miltants killed last Wednesday by the army near Nablus in the West Bank.
The latest attack came just hours after Israeli forces entered the autonomous West Bank city of Bethlehem in search of militants and netted one of the most wanted Palestinian suspects.
Dozens of Palestinians were seized as troops and about armoured vehicles moved into Bethlehem before dawn, taking up positions across the town, including around the Church of the Nativity, scene of a five-week siege which ended on May 10.
Israel said it arrested the head of the Bethlehem branch of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and several of his cohorts, blaming them for a number of recent suicide bombings.
It was the second such raid in 24 hours, and came a day after army chief of staff General Shaul Mofaz warned that Israel could launch much ”deeper” incursions to thwart suicide attackers, who,
according to Israeli statistics, are being intercepted at a rate of two a day.
Erakat said Arafat feared a renewed Israeli occupation of Ramallah, the scene of heavy clashes in last month’s invasion which left the Palestinian leader under siege for a month.
Palestinian security sources said the army had declared the whole of Bethlehem a ”closed military zone” off-limits to the press, and slapped a curfew on the town to prevent militants again seeking sanctuary in the Nativity Church.
Meanwhile the army still encircled Tulkarem, north of Qalqilya, which it had occupied on Sunday while Palestinians also reported raids in Hebron and four nearby villages, where dozens were taken prisoner.
The army said it was ”operating in the Bethlehem sector to hit the infrastructures of terrorism and preserve the gains of Operation Defensive Wall”, launched in the West Bank at the end of March after a spate of suicide bombings.
The army had already moved in to Bethlehem twice over the weekend and trashed the home of a local Islamic Jihad leader who narrowly escaped capture.
Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer said security forces were ”preventing 90% of planned attacks, capturing two suicide bombers every day before they can strike.”
”We hope now that 10% of cases where we have not
succeeded will drop after the operations we have launched” in Tulkarem, Qalqilya and Bethlehem, he said.
On Monday, Israeli police also found a 10-kilogramme bomb in the Jewish settlement suburb of Ramot Eshkol, in annexed east Jerusalem, that was safely defused.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian leadership recommended presidential and legislative elections be held in December 2002, during a meeting in Ramallah chaired by Arafat.
But the ageing leader, whom US President George Bush accused on Sunday of not delivering on his pledge to reform his Palestinian Authority, will nevertheless have the final word on a date for the long overdue polls. – Sapa-AFP