Israelis raid Palestinian buildings, blast police station
Israeli warplanes demolished a building in the West Bank, in retaliation for yesterday's suicide bombing in Jerusalem.
A Palestinian suicide bomber detonated his nail-studded explosive inside a crowded Jerusalem pizza restaurant, killing 15 and wounding nearly 100.
A long series of funerals of victims of the blast started yesterday. Among the dead were five members of a family - a father, mother and three small children.
In raids that focused primarily on driving the Palestinians out of key buildings in disputed east Jerusalem, police took over Orient House, the Palestinian political centre, arresting seven guards, and closed nine other Palestinian offices.
Police and soldiers also took control of a complex of Palestinian Government buildings in Abu Dis, just outside Jerusalem.
The move was certain to spark a confrontation with the Palestinians, who are demanding east Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
Israel has controlled all of the city since capturing the eastern sector in the 1967 Middle East war, and the city’s future was one of the most contentious issues in the peace negotiations that have collapsed.
In the West Bank town of Ramallah, just north of Jerusalem, an Israeli air strike carried out with F-16 warplanes destroyed a Palestinian police building, the Palestinians said.
It marked the first Israeli attack with warplanes since a May strike that drew sharp international criticism. No one was hurt in the attack.
A statement from the Israeli military said the air strike followed ‘‘involvement of Palestinian policemen in terrorist activity.’’
After a special session of the security Cabinet that stretched into the early hours of today, Cabinet secretary Gideon Saar said the police and military operations were ‘‘intended to motivate the Palestinian Authority to carry out its commitments to fight against terror, to fight against violence, and honour the agreements it signed.’’
In Jerusalem, the bombing at the crowded Sbarro restaurant was the second deadliest attack in more than 10 months of fighting, and few Israelis were in the mood for restraint afterward.
‘‘We are in a war,’’ Jerusalem’s Mayor Ehud Olmert said after the blast at Sbarro, part of a US-based chain. ‘‘We will act together with the government of Israel to reach every one of those who is responsible for terror, to hit them and kill them.’’
Most of the dead were Israelis, but police said American Judith Greenbaum, from New Jersey, and Brazilian Giora Balash were among those killed.
Hanna Tova Nachemberg, 31, of Riverdale, New York, was critically wounded with shrapnel in her chest, according to Rabbi Avi Weiss of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale.
The rabbi said Nachemberg was accompanying family members who belong to the group of visiting American Jews expressing solidarity with Israel.
US President George W. Bush said Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat ‘‘must condemn this horrific terrorist attack, (and) act now to arrest and bring to justice those responsible.’’
Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said that the Palestinians had not done enough to stop violence.
‘‘It’s awfully hard to sit here and judge the Israeli reaction and be critical of it when this happens in one of their major cities,’’ Biden said during a trip to China.
Concealing a bomb in a bag, the assailant entered the packed restaurant on the corner of two of the city’s busiest downtown streets, Jaffa and King George, and set off the explosive, spraying shrapnel in a deafening blast.
In a scene of chaos and anguish, the injured were sprawled and bleeding in the street that was covered with shards of glass. Some who were traumatized but unhurt huddled on the street and wept.
The restaurant was gutted by the blast - its windows blown out, chairs, tables and other debris littering the pavement.
Anat Amar was giving pizza to her four children ‘‘when I heard a huge crash over my head and there was lots of smoke and my little girl flew down with all the chairs on top of her.’’
‘‘I shouted to my eldest boy and he dived over and picked her up and ran with her across the road,’’ Amar told Israeli television. She picked up the others and followed. They suffered only minor injuries.
In the street, some young Israelis chanted, ‘‘Death to Arabs,’’ and wore t-shirts that read, ‘‘No Arabs no attacks.’’ In a busy market a few blocks from the scene of the attack, Israelis punched and kicked Palestinians.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad, two militant Palestinian groups that have for years been carrying out bomb attacks against Israel, both claimed responsibility.
