Israel struck back with helicopter attacks in the Gaza Strip overnight after a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 19 people, including five children, in the northern Israeli town of Haifa.
The radical Palestinian movement Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the suicide attack by a woman lawyer at a restaurant in the Israeli port city of Haifa on Saturday, the eve of the Jewish Yom Kippur holiday.
The bomber, 29-year-old Hanadi Tayssir Jaradat, detonated the charge inside the Maxim restaurant, which was filled with people enjoying a late lunch on the Sabbath.
The suicide bomber’s brother and cousin had been killed by the Israeli army in June.
Hours later Israeli helicopter gunships launched twin attacks in the Gaza Strip, targeting the homes of Islamic activists, Palestinian security sources said early on Sunday.
The first attack was on Gaza City, where explosions were heard.
The target was the home of a member of the radical Palestinian group Hamas, near an office of the Palestinian presidency. The house was hit but was empty at the time, the sources said. Several people were slightly injured by flying glass.
Soon afterwards Israeli helicopters struck again at the al-Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
The electricity supply was cut in the camp after two missiles were fired and explosions were heard, the sources said, giving no information of any casualties.
Witnesses said the target for the Israelis was the house of an Islamic Jihad activist, which was also empty at the time.
Israeli public radio said the target was an arms and explosives dump.
There were fears that Israel would take further retaliatory action following the deadly attack in Haifa, a place previously seen as something of a haven of Israeli-Palestinian co-habitation.
After the blast, corpses could be seen on the floor of the upmarket restaurant owned by an Arab-Israeli family and which was popular for family gatherings.
The blast went off at around 2.20pm (12.20pm GMT) in the harbour city, about 130km north of Jerusalem, which has a large Arab minority.
It was the first suicide attack in Israel since twin bombings by Hamas near Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem on September 9, which left 15 people dead, as well as the bombers.
Two days after that attack, the Israeli security cabinet approved the ”removal” of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat from his headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
Thirty Israeli and foreign pacifists took up position on Saturday at Arafat’s headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah to act as human shields against possible Israeli retaliation, witnesses said.
United States President George Bush condemned the latest suicide attack, blaming Palestinian terrorism for the lack of progress toward a comprehensive settlement in the Middle East.
”I condemn unequivocally the vicious act of terrorism,” Bush said in a statement.
”This murderous action, aimed at families gathered to enjoy a Sabbath lunch,” is a ”despicable attack” that ”underscores once again the responsibility of Palestinian authorities to fight terror, which remains the foremost obstacle to achieving the vision of two states living side by side in peace and security”.
Israeli Health Minister Dany Naveh said after the attack that the government should now carry through its threat against Arafat.
”The criminal attack today is certainly the occasion to carry out the decision of the Cabinet and remove Arafat,” said Naveh, a member of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s right-wing Likud party.
”It is clear to all of us that this individual is the major obstacle to better days … we must carry out this decision,” he added.
Industry Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel was ”obliged” to dismantle the infrastructure of groups such as Islamic Jihad and Hamas in the Palestinian territories, starting with the Gaza Strip.
Arafat himself and the Palestinian leadership ”vigorously condemned” the attack, in a statement published by the official Wafa news agency.
The veteran Palestinian leader also called for a new ceasefire with Israel to be overseen by the sponsors of the road map for peace plan. Peled said that ”whatever Arafat says is totally irrelevant and not taken seriously”.
Palestinian prime minister-designate Ahmed Qorei issued a condemnation and urged all Palestinian groups to stop targeting civilians. But he also called on the Israeli government to halt its confiscation of Palestinian land.
Israel announced on Wednesday that it would push ahead with the next stage of a separation barrier that at times cuts deep into Palestinian land in the West Bank. On Thursday, it unveiled plans for hundreds more homes in West Bank Jewish settlements. — Sapa-AFP
Israel dynamites home of suicide bomber