Four dead and 32 injured after Israel suicide blast
A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowded outdoor market in central Tel Aviv today, killing at least four people and wounding 32.
Paramedics treated dazed shoppers on the ground, as vegetables were strewn on the pavement.
Police searched the Carmel market, including rubbish bins, for additional explosives.
Witnesses said the ground shook when the blast went off near a dairy shop in the Israeli city’s biggest market when it was crowded with lunchtime shoppers.
“There was a woman whose entire body was torn up, all her body was torn up, “ said witness Michal Weizman. “I was about 10 metres from the shop. I saw lots of people lying on the ground, lots of people wounded.”
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
David Tzur, a local police commander, said the explosion was set off by a suicide bomber, and that “between four and five” people were killed, including the attacker.
It would be the first suicide attack in Israel since August 31, when Palestinian militants simultaneously blew up two buses in the southern desert city of Beersheba, killing 16.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was in parliament when he received a first report of the bombing.
Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat condemned the bombing. “We urge the international community to exert every possible effort to revive the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians, which is the only to break this cycle of violence,” he said.
The attack came while Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is undergoing urgent medical treatment in a Paris hospital.
