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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Suicide bomber kills three, ends 9-month lull in Israel


An Israeli woman is comforted by a friend  at the site of a suicide bombing Monday that killed three people inside a bakery in the southern Israel resort city of Eilat. 
 (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Scott Wilson Washington Post

JERUSALEM – A 21-year-old Palestinian from the Gaza Strip blew himself up Monday inside a bakery in the Israeli resort city of Eilat, killing himself and all three people inside.

The morning suicide attack was the first inside Israel in nine months, and it brought sharp condemnation from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the White House and leaders of the Fatah faction led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

But the governing Hamas movement and Islamic Jihad, a smaller radical group that claimed responsibility for the bombing, called the attack a legitimate response to Israel’s occupation of territories that Palestinians envision as part of their future state.

Islamic Jihad officials said the bombing should motivate Palestinian armed groups – whose partisan fighting in Gaza has killed nearly 30 people in recent days – to end their differences and unite against Israel.

“This is an important message to the factions,” Mohammed el-Hindi, an Islamic Jihad political leader in Gaza, told al-Jazeera satellite television. “We have to remember that we are one nation with one enemy.”

Olmert met with military officials after the attack in Eilat, a resort city on the Red Sea whose tourism industry has suffered in the aftermath of Israel’s war last summer with the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah. It was the first suicide bombing in the city, although Israeli vacationers have been targeted in the past just across the border in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

Because there were no survivors inside Lehamim Bakery, located in a residential neighborhood on the edge of Eilat’s tourist district, Israeli officials took more than an hour to determine the cause of the 9:40 a.m. explosion.

Olmert said he is weighing a response and vowed to “continue in our ongoing and unending struggle against terrorists and those who send them.”

At a news conference in Gaza City, a masked gunman from Islamic Jihad’s military wing identified the bomber as Mohammed Siksik, a member of the group from the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya.

Islamic Jihad officials said he entered Israel through Jordan, a contention the Jordanian government denied.

Fatah officials condemned the bombing, saying it undermined the party’s goal of reviving peace negotiations with Israel. But Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for Hamas, which won parliamentary elections a year ago and controls the Palestinian ministries, said, “All the Palestinian people and factions support this martyr operation.”

In a statement, the White House said: “The burden of responsibility for preventing terrorist attacks rests with the Palestinian Authority government. Failure to act against terror will inevitably affect relations between that government and the international community and undermine the aspirations of the Palestinian people for a state of their own.”