Suicide Attack Kills 3 in Israeli Resort Town
JERUSALEM _ A Palestinian suicide bomber struck in the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat on Monday, blowing himself up in a bakery and killing three others. It was the first suicide bombing in Israel in nine months, and the first ever in its southernmost city, which had been spared such attacks during more than six years of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Islamic Jihad and a branch of Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack, calling it a message to feuding Palestinian groups to stop fighting each other and turn their guns on Israel.
At least 30 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since Thursday in fighting between rival factions Fatah and Hamas. A truce between the two sides was announced early Tuesday, though previous cease-fires have quickly unraveled.
An Islamic Jihad spokesman said that the bomber, Muhammad Siksik, 21, from the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahiya, had reached Eilat from Jordan on a mission that had been planned for seven months. The spokesman promised more attacks in what he called an effort to shift attention from internal fighting to the battle with Israel.
Jordan denied that the bomber had entered its territory, and Israeli police officials said he had infiltrated Israel from Egypt, crossing north of Eilat from the Sinai desert. “We know exactly the point where he crossed,” said police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld.
The attack shattered a lull in suicide bombings in Israel that has been attributed to Israeli security measures and an agreement by most Palestinian militant groups to suspend such attacks as part of a shaky cease-fire. Islamic Jihad, which is backed by Iran, has rejected the truce. It carried out the last suicide attack in Tel Aviv on April 17.
“For a long time we enjoyed relative calm, but it should be said, an illusory calm regarding terror activity,” said Israeli Prime Minster Ehud Olmert. “It was not always publicized, (but) we thwarted a great many attacks in various areas.”
In Washington, the White House condemned the bombing, taking a swipe at the Hamas-led Palestinian government.
“The burden of responsibility for preventing terrorist attacks rests with the Palestinian Authority government,” White House spokesman Tony Snow said in a statement. “Failure to act against terror will inevitably effect relations between that government and the international community and undermine the aspirations of the Palestinian people for a state of their own.”
Although the bombing was in a residential neighborhood far from Eilat’s hotels and beaches, the attack threatened to further hurt tourism in the city, which has seen a sharp decline in foreign visitors during the recent years of violence.
“The city of Eilat is unaccustomed to such events; this is certainly a big shock,” Mayor Meir Yitzhak Halevy told Israel Radio. “I’m definitely concerned, because this is a city that depends on the tourist industry.”
The bomber was picked up on the northern outskirts of Eilat by a motorist who grew suspicious of his passenger and alerted the authorities after dropping him off.
The driver, Yossi Voltinsky, who was on his way to work, told Channel Ten television that he noticed his passenger, who wore a small backpack, was “acting very pressured and very nervous,” failed to respond when spoken to, and took notice when Voltinsky reached for his cell phone.
Voltinsky said he pulled over on an empty side street and asked the passenger to get out. He then contacted the police and tried to follow the bomber in his car, but lost sight of him.
As police vehicles headed to the area, the bomber reached a row of shops, walked into the bakery and detonated his explosives.
The blast flung debris and body parts onto the sidewalk and adjacent buildings, killing the bomber and three people in the bakery, one of whom was identified as an employee. Grisly television images from the scene showed a headless torso and other human remains on the pavement as police investigators combed through the wreckage.
A joint statement by Islamic Jihad and a branch of Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah, said that the attack was “a natural response” to killings of their members by Israeli forces in the West Bank and to Israeli military incursions in the Gaza Strip.
Linking the attack to the recent Palestinian infighting, the statement urged warring Palestinian factions “to halt the internal fighting immediately and point all guns at the Zionist enemy.” The Islamic Jihad spokesman said that the group would step up its attacks in order “to turn attention from these regrettable clashes” to the confrontation with Israel.
The bomber’s mother, Ruwaida Siksik, said he had bid her farewell when he left home Friday, saying he was going on a suicide mission in Israel. Holding a rifle, the mother praised the bombing and said she was proud of her son. She said he had recently lost his 7-month-old daughter to a nerve disease and that his best friend was killed six months ago in an Israeli military operation in northern Gaza, an event she said drove him to become religious and join Islamic Jihad.
Relatives said it was unclear how the bomber had left the fenced-off Gaza Strip at a time when the Rafah border crossing to Egypt is often closed. Israeli media reports suggested that he might have been taken through a smuggling tunnel under the Gaza-Egypt border.
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GRAPHIC (from MCT Graphics, 202-383-6064): 20070129 Israel bomb
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