AL QUDS, June 30: Suspected Palestinian bombers injured two people on Sunday in an attack on a busy train in central Israel, as Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer sent in troops to start dismantling illegal outposts built by Jewish settlers on Palestinian land.

Meanwhile, violence subsided in Al Khalil in the southern West Bank, one of seven Palestinian towns re-occupied by Israel in an operation the Jewish state says is aimed at breaking up militant groups.

The railroad blast occurred just outside Lod station as the train, packed with 500 passengers, headed for Tel Aviv from Beersheba in the south, police said.

It smashed windows on a carriage and slightly injured two passengers, with a third suffering from shock.

“At this stage of the inquiry, everything leads us to believe that this was a Palestinian attack,” police spokesman Gil Kleiman said.

Local police official Haim Cohen told Israeli public radio that a Palestinian suspect was detained for questioning.

Two similar railroad attacks were carried out in May and June last year, without causing any injuries.

Meanwhile the defence minister started to fulfil a pledge to dismantle 10 outposts illegally built by Jewish settlers in the West Bank, a week after US President Bush called for a freeze on settlements as part of his Middle East peace vision.

Ben Eliezer ordered his troops to break up the new settlement sites before nightfall on Sunday, public radio said.

Soldiers started dismantling two wildcat settlements south of Al Khalil later in the day, though the minister told reporters the operation could stretch on into mid-July and encompass up to two dozen such sites.

But the defence minister, also leader of the left-wing Labour Party which is due to hold its annual conference on Monday, was slammed by the Peace Now anti-settlement group for allowing new settlements to be built and for fudging the issue of dismantling them. The group said in a statement that 44 new settlement sites had been erected since Prime Minister Sharon was elected in February 2001.—AFP