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Two Killed In Car Bomb Blast In Israel
JERUSALEM (AFP) - At least two people were killed and 25 injured when a powerful car bomb exploded near a bus in rush-hour traffic in the northern Israeli town of Hadera on Wednesday.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak swiftly condemned the attack as "barbaric" and said he holds Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority responsible.
"This is a barbaric attack against our innocent citizens," Barak said in a statement.
"The responsibility lies with the Palestinian Authority, which freed terrorists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad and which encourages and sends its own people to commit attacks," he added.
But a top Palestinian official told AFP the Palestinian Authority was "shocked" by Barak's charges.
"The accusation is an excuse to continue the aggressions against the Palestinian people with all of its types of weapons," the official told AFP.
The self-rule authority last month freed dozens of prisoners from the two groups that have been behind most anti-Israeli attacks since the signing of the Oslo peace accords in 1993.
"The state of Israel will settle its accounts with those behind the attack and those who ordered it," Barak added.
The prime minister is to hold an emergency meeting of his security cabinet at 11 pm (2100 GMT), Israeli television reported.
At least three of the injured are in a serious condition, Israeli television and radio reported.
Media reports said shop windows had been smashed by the blast and fires set off as result of the explosion, which occurred at around 5:25 pm (1525 GMT).
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which comes after almost eight weeks of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories that has claimed the lives of more than 260 people, most of them Palestinians.
In January, more than 20 people were injured when a pipe bomb exploded in the same town, which lies just inland from the Mediterranean coast between Tel Aviv and the northern port of Haifa.
The Wednesday car bomb was the latest incident in a seesawing round of violence.
Earlier Wednesday, four Palestinians were killed and two injured in an Israeli ambush near a Jewish settlement in the southern Gaza Strip.
The Israeli army said the ambush was a bid to arrest Abdel Razeq, a leader of a wing of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's faction, Fatah. Razeq was killed.
That followed Israeli air and sea attacks on Palestinian targets Monday night in retaliation for a bomb attack against a school bus in the Gaza Strip earlier that day which killed two Jewish settlers and injured another nine people, including children who were mutilated.
On November 2nd, two Israelis were killed when a car bomb exploded near a busy market in the heart of west Jerusalem in an attack claimed by Islamic Jihad.
Hadera was also the scene of a Hamas attack in April 1994 that killed five people and left 30 injured.
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