UMM EL FAHEM (Israel), March 20: A Palestinian suicide bomber killed himself and seven passengers, including four Israeli soldiers, on a bus carrying mostly Israeli Arabs in northern Israel on Wednesday.

The blast, claimed by the radical group Islamic Jihad and condemned by the Palestinian leadership, was the deadliest suicide bombing since March 9, when a bomber killed 11 people at a crowded Al Quds cafe.

Another 35 people were wounded in Wednesday’s attack, six of them seriously, near the Arab Israeli town of Umm El Fahem, in what could deal a blow to hopes of an imminent ceasefire brokered by the United States.

An anonymous caller, claiming to represent Islamic Jihad, told AFP the bomber was Rafad Abu Diak, 20, from the village of Silat al-Dhar, between Nablus and Jenin in the northern West Bank.

The Palestinian Authority condemned the incident and said all attacks on civilians inside Israel must stop.

“Our people do not accept that any Palestinian should go and attack civilians inside Israel,” the Palestinian leadership said in a statement.

Most of the passengers travelling in the bus were Israeli Arabs on their way to work, a spokesman for the bus operator, Egged, told state radio.

“The suicide bomber blew himself up at the back of the bus, which was full and travelling from Tel Aviv to the town of Nazareth in the north of Israel,” the spokesman said.

The attack took place in a sector close to the “Green Line” separating Israel from the West Bank.

It came just hours before a high-level security meeting scheduled between Israeli and Palestinian officials under the auspices of the CIA and Anthony Zinni, a retired Marine Corps general sent by Washington to map out a ceasefire.

That meeting aims to hammer out the last problems preventing a ceasefire declaration after a visit to the region by US Vice President Dick Cheney, who said he would meet Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat if he enforced a truce.

The Palestinian leadership, convened in Ramallah on Tuesday by Arafat, said it was “fully ready” to put into effect the Tenet ceasefire plan, drawn up last June by CIA director George Tenet. Zinni went into closed talks with Arafat in Ramallah at midday.

Meanwhile, Israel accused Arafat of doing nothing to prevent attacks on Israeli targets, despite his public pledges.—AFP