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At Least Seventeen Killed in Jerusalem Bombing
JERUSALEM, Aug 9 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Seventeen people were killed and around 80 injured when a huge bomb blast, apparently detonated by a Palestinian bomber, ripped through a crowded pizzeria in central west Jerusalem Thursday, Internal Security Minister Uzi Landau said on army radio.
"Seventeen people were killed and around 80 injured, some of them seriously," Landau said.
CNN reported that medical and police sources said at least 19 were killed, including five or six infants.
The Palestinian activist group Islamic Jihad gave a statement to the French news
agency AFP claiming responsibility for the blast.
"The al-Qods Brigades claim responsibility for the heroic suicide operation which took place around
14:00 local time [11:00 GMT] conducted by the martyr Hussein Omar Abu Nassaeh, aged 23," said the statement from the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad.
The bomber had apparently blown himself up inside Sbarro, a popular pizzeria on the junction of Jaffa Road and King George V Street in west Jerusalem, the Israeli side of the town, the radio said.
The bomb was packed with nails, a police official told the radio.
It was one of the worst bomb attacks in Jerusalem since the start of the Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, 10 months ago, and came as Palestinian resistance groups vowed revenge on Israel for its policy killing activists whom it claimed were responsible for attacks.
Police sealed off the area for fear another bomb could be inside the building, as medical workers and fire crews pulled the dead and injured from the wreckage of the pizzeria.
"All the windows have been blown out, [it is] absolute shambles inside this restaurant," a CNN reporter was quoted at the scene.
A worker at the pizzeria who left his shift around 15 minutes before the attack told AFP that most of the 10 or so servers in the restaurant were Palestinians from east Jerusalem.
The identity of the victims was not immediately known.
Mayor Ehud Olmert said the bombing was "very serious," but he did not give a final toll, indicating that the number of dead could still rise.
People could be seen lying on the road outside the restaurant as stretcher-bearers loaded the injured into ambulances and rushed them to hospital.
The walking wounded, many drenched in blood, were led away clutching their injuries.
The attack came as tensions between Palestinians and Israelis were on a knife's edge.
Islamic Jihad had earlier claimed responsibility for a bomb blast in a telephone call to AFP offices in Amman.
"The forces of Salah Eddine al-Ayubi of the Islamic Jihad movement claim the operation that happened in Jerusalem, a quarter of an hour ago," the caller said. Islamic Jihad has carried out past attacks.
The caller said the blast was caused by a rigged gas canister and was the organization's "gift [in response] to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's speech."
That was in reference to a speech Wednesday, in which Saddam reiterated his support for the Palestinian Intifada.
Calls for vengeance have been swelling in the past month after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stepped up his policy of killing Palestinian activists suspected of attacks against Israel. Sharon has used helicopter or rocket strikes, booby-trapped cars or sniper attacks.
The international community, including Israel's closest ally, the United States, has dubbed the campaign a "risky provocation."
Nine members of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas have died in such attacks since July 17th, along with civilians and children. Israeli occupation forces have assassinated nearly 50 other Palestinians since the beginning of the al-Aqsa Intifada.
CNN reported that an Israeli government spokesman said the Palestinian Authority would have to accept responsibility for the blast, since Palestinians carried it out.
Israeli Cabinet minister without portfolio Dani Naveh told CNN, "We see [Palestinian Authority President Yasser] Arafat and the Palestinian Authority responsible for this terrible attack in Jerusalem today.
"Arafat is the one that gave the green light to Islamic Jihad to commit such bombings. He has released from jail terrorists with blood on their hands."
Naveh promised that Israel would retaliate as it has in the past, CNN reported.
"Our only target is to prevent further terrible attacks," he was quoted by CNN as saying. "We will do whatever we can in order to stop terrorists from coming into our towns."
But Palestinians say that Israel's stringent blockade, compounding years of unjust policies under illegal occupation, are the issues that provoke violence from Palestinians that their own officials cannot control, CNN said.
The Palestinian sentiment found an unusual echo in a warning before the bombing from Sharon's dovish foreign minister, Shimon Peres, that Israel's tough restrictions on Palestinians trying to
travel within the region was bringing simmering tensions in the occupied territories to a boiling point.
"There are three million Palestinians who have lived under restrictions for 10 months, and we must understand this is a key problem which could explode in our face," said Peres.
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