TEL AVIV, April 30: A Palestinian suicide bomber killed three Israelis and injured 55 at a crowded Tel Aviv nightclub early on Wednesday.
The beachfront bombing came just hours after a landmark vote by the Palestinian parliament approving a new cabinet under Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, whose agenda for curbing attacks on Israelis has drawn angry defiance from militants.
Police said the bomber blew himself up in the early morning hours after trying in vain to push past a security guard at “Mike’s Place”, a popular night spot next to the U.S. embassy.
Blood and body parts smeared the club’s shattered entrance. The bomber’s black coat was left dangling from beams over the door with a bloodied hand sticking out of one sleeve. An empty guitar case left by one of the club’s musicians lay nearby.
“The place was crowded with young people for a jazz and blues night,” said Israeli police spokesman Gil Kleiman.
A woman who was in a pub next door described a scene of horror and panic. “I saw people running away in flames, some without skin. It was shocking,” she told Israeli television.
Palestinian journalists said they had received a joint claim of responsibility for the bombing from the Hamas and an armed offshoot of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction.
Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said: “We condemn any attack that targets Israeli or Palestinian civilians.”
Israel said the violence intensified the pressure on the revamped Palestinian leadership to make good on promises to rein in militants, who Abbas said had created “armed chaos” damaging Palestinian hopes of winning international blessing for a state.
“The new Palestinian government must realise that fighting terror must top their agenda, that this bloodletting against Israeli citizens must stop now,” David Baker, an official in Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s office, said.
The Israeli government has ruled out moves toward a Palestinian state without an end to attacks by militants.
Mahmoud Abbas, who in 1993 co-authored interim peace deals since eclipsed by bloodshed, signalled his intention to disarm militants.
“There is no room for weapons except in the hands of the government,” he told the Palestinian parliament on Tuesday, shortly before it voted 53-18 to approve his cabinet.
Militants who have pledged to destroy Israel itself swiftly swore to oppose Mr Abbas, who is backed by Washington as a counterweight to Arafat, but lacks popularity.
Legislators who voted against the cabinet said they objected to disabling armed “resistance” before the Israeli army had withdrawn from Palestinian cities.
Mr Abbas’s bold criticism of the powerful militant factions spurred Washington to seize on him as the man to revive a peace process with Israel in deep freeze for almost three years.
But he laid out conditions for a deal to parliament on Tuesday echoing those of Yasser Arafat, whom the United States and Israel have tried to sideline as an alleged obstacle to peace.
Abbas said Palestinians would insist on the “right of return” to what is now Israel of refugees uprooted in wars dating to 1948.—Reuters