AFULA (Israel), Nov 27: Two teenage Palestinians killed two Israelis and wounded 34 others in a rampage through an Israeli town centre on Tuesday before being shot dead, the first day of a US mission to end 14 months of bloodshed that has cost almost 1,000 lives.

The attack in the northern Israeli town of Afula was claimed by the hardline Islamic Jihad, which said it operated with the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement.

The two 19-year-olds, one from each organization, were finally killed by police after a spree lasting more than 10 minutes, witnesses said.

Nine of the injured were seriously hurt, while 22 were treated for shock.

Israeli chief of staff Shaul Mofaz, who escaped a bomb attack on his convoy in the West Bank on Sunday, said “Arafat himself has given the order ... to carry out attacks against Israeli citizens in the heart of Israel”.

“It was awful. I was on the balcony. All of a sudden I saw a young man spraying the crowd with rifle fire. There was a woman with a bag who tried to take cover, and he shot her before being shot himself,” said one woman witness on the radio.

Another witness, Mordechai Cohen, said the two attackers were 30 metres from the town bus station when they started their bloody rampage.

“They shot someone in the head and fled toward the market, shooting in all directions without anyone stopping them,” he told the radio.—AFP