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Bomb Blast in Netanya, Two Israelis Killed, About
56 Injured
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| Israeli rescue workers carry a body from the scene of the blast |
JERUSALEM, May 19 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Three people, including the bomber, were killed in a resistance bomb attack on the Israeli coastal town of Netanya Sunday, claimed by Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, hours after the Israeli army made fresh incursions into Gaza, news agencies reported.
About 56 people were injured in the blast, seven of them were listed in serious condition, medical sources said.
The kamikaze attack occurred in a market street in the center of the town, which on March 27 was the scene of the worst bomb attack in the almost 20-month Palestinian Intifada, when 29 Israelis were killed in a hotel, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The bomber is reported to have pulled up in a taxi before detonating an explosive belt, BBC’s online news service reported.
The Israeli police received a warning of a possible terror attack in the Sharon area at around 4 P.M. Israeli forces were beefed up along the Green Line border with the West Bank, according to Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz.
"There was a sharp explosion," a witness, who gave his name as Baruch, told Israel Radio. He said the market was relatively empty at the start of the Israeli work week, reported Ha’aretz.
The attack came in the heels of an Israeli army unit’s incursion East of Gaza City. A Palestinian security source said that ‘Israeli tanks, buldozers and armoured vehicles pushed hundreds of meters into Palestinian-held territories, buldozing agricultural lands and destroying homes.
The source asserted the Israeli forces were still raiding the area, just hours before the lates Natenya blast.
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| Israeli tanks made an incursion into Gaza Sunday |
For its part, Israel charged Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority with ultimate responsibility for the suicide bombing in the coastal town of Netanya on Sunday, accusing it of "doing nothing against terrorism."
In an anonymous call to AFP, Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. "The Islamic Resistance Movement and its al-Qassam military branch claim the martyr operation of Netanya," the caller said, using the group's full name.
On Friday, May 17, a Hamas spokesman said that resistance bomb attacks will keep striking Israel until a Palestinian state is created.
"The martyr operations as well as the resistance will continue until the building of a Palestinian state," Ossama Hamdan, told a crowd of 5,000 at a rally at the Al-Bass Palestinian refugee camp in south Lebanon.
Hamas leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, has repeatedly called on Israel to stop attacking Palestinian civilians, as a condition for limiting Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation targets in the Palestinian territories.
Earlier Sunday, four Israeli occupation soldiers traveling in a jeep were slightly wounded by a road-side bomb planted near a crossing point between the northeastern Gaza Strip and Israel, military sources said.
The soldiers were traveling in a convoy protecting a passenger bus headed for a Jewish settlement in central Gaza and their jeep was flipped over by the blast near the Karni crossing point, they said.
Palestinian security services said that shortly after the attack, Israeli tanks, armored vehicles, more jeeps and a bulldozer moved about 200 meters (yards) into self-rule Palestinian lands in the area and leveled land and ripped up trees, AFP reported.
The armed wing of a Palestinian resistance group, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), later claimed the attack in a statement released in Gaza City.
"This is revenge for the crimes committed in the [Palestinian] cities and refugee camps by the terrorist government of [Israeli Prime Minister] Ariel Sharon," said the group, vowing to continue its "operations”.
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