Palestinian bomber breaks truce
Four killed in suicide blast outside Tel Aviv nightclub
Tel Aviv, Israel ? A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowd of young Israelis waiting outside a nightclub near Tel Aviv’s beachfront promenade just before midnight Friday, killing at least four other people, wounding dozens and shattering an informal Mideast truce.
A senior commander of a Palestinian militant group, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah, which is funded by Iran and has been trying to disrupt the cease-fire, hired a Palestinian from the northern West Bank to carry out the bombing. Palestinian security officials also implicated Hezbollah.
A Hezbollah official in Beirut denied involvement: “As far as we are concerned, there is no need to respond to such lies.”
Israeli officials indicated the attack would not derail the tentative peace efforts. But the bombing put new pressure on Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to take action against militants who have not accepted the cease-fire he worked out with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at a summit that was carefully orchestrated with the help of the United States, Egypt and other moderate Arab countries.
Early today, Abbas pledged to track down those responsible for the bombing, the first suicide attack in Israel since a bomber killed two people Nov. 1 in a Tel Aviv market.
“The Palestinian Authority will not stand silent in the face of this act of sabotage. We will follow and track down those responsible and they will be punished accordingly,” Abbas said in a statement after an emergency meeting with his security chiefs.
“What happened tonight was an act of sabotage toward the peace process and an attempt to ruin the efforts to establish a state of calm,” Abbas said.