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5 killed in suicide bombing in Israel

* Israel tells army to kill militants after rocket attacks on farmers

NETANYA: A Palestinian suicide bomber killed at least five people and wounded 40 outside a shopping mall in an Israeli coastal town on Monday.

The attack was the first of its kind in six weeks.

Lebanon’s Hizbollah Television said that the Islamic Jihad group’s military wing, the Jerusalem Brigades, claimed responsibility for the attack in a telephone call to the station.

Earlier, a Gaza radio station said that Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, part of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the bombing in Netanya.

“There was a boom and there was a flash. Seconds later, people were lying on the ground, some wounded and some dead,” witness Yisrael Klein told Channel Two Television. “The most horrific sight was the severed head of the terrorist.”

Emergency officials put the death toll at five and said that at least 40 people were wounded, seven of them seriously.

Bodies lay covered with blankets at the entrance to the Sharon Mall in Netanya, the frequent target of suicide bombings during a five-year-old Palestinian uprising.

It was the first such bombing since October 26, when a suicide bomber killed six people in the coastal city of Hadera, just north of Netanya.

The latest attack dealt another blow to a shaky ceasefire that Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared in February. “A suicide bomber who tried to enter the Sharon Mall in Netanya was spotted by passers-by after he raised their suspicions,” said Avi Sasson, deputy police chief in the area. “Two policemen at the scene pulled out their guns and ordered him to halt and to take his hands out of his pockets. At that stage, he blew himself up.”

The bombing could complicate the run-up to Israeli and Palestinian elections in coming months.

Palestinian officials quickly denounced the bombing. “The Palestinian Authority condemns the attack. This harms Palestinian interests and aims at sabotaging efforts exerted to revive the peace process,” chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said.

Abbas is struggling to instil order in Palestinian areas ahead of a January parliamentary election whose preliminary stages have already been marred by internal violence.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz has ordered the army to track down and kill Palestinian militants behind rocket attacks after a strike on an Israeli farming community near the Gaza Strip, officials said on Monday.

Defence Ministry officials said that Mofaz gave the order following a renewal at the weekend of rocket strikes from the Gaza Strip, the territory Israel quit three months ago after 38 years of military occupation.

In the latest strike, two rockets hit the farming community of Shuva, about 8 kilometres from the Gaza Strip, on Sunday night. Two residents were treated for shock after a rocket landed near a house.

“He (Mofaz) has ordered the army to identify those firing rockets and hit them ... due to a resumption and intensification of the rocket attacks,” a Defence Ministry official said.

The Israeli military responded to Sunday’s rocket strike by launching an air strike and firing artillery at open fields in the Gaza Strip, which it said were used as rocket launching sites. reuters

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