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Suicide bomber kills five at Israeli mall
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-06 09:23
A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up among shoppers outside a mall
Monday, killing at least five people and putting pressure on Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon for a tough response ahead of a fierce election campaign.
Sharon held an emergency meeting of his security Cabinet to decide how to
respond to the attack, which wounded 40 people, while Palestinian leader Mahmoud
Abbas threatened his own strong action against those responsible.
An Israeli driver who spotted the bomber carrying a suspicious bag toward the
mall alerted police. A mall security guard hustled him away from the entrance
and pushed him against a wall, where the bomber detonated his explosives. The
guard was among the five people killed, police said.
Israeli medics remove a body at the site of a
suicide bomb attack in the Israeli coastal city of Netanya Monday Dec. 5,
2005. [AP] | "If the bomber had gotten in, the
result would have been much worse," said Israel's police chief, Moshe Karadi.
The bombing was the fifth since a truce took effect last February.
Islamic Jihad, a militant group that has carried out all five of the attacks,
claimed responsibility for Monday's bombing, saying it was retaliation for
Israeli killings of the group's leaders.
Israel and the Palestinians are in the middle of election campaigns, and more
violence could hurt both Sharon and Abbas, who say they support returning to the
internationally backed "road map" peace plan.
The blast shattered windows and pocked the outside of the brown multistory
building. Pieces of concrete were ripped off the facade, blood stained the walls
and debris littered the sidewalk.
More than a half hour after the bombing, one body lay on the ground,
blackened legs sticking out from under a blanket, while another lay nearby under
a sheet. Emergency workers rushed wheeled stretchers with the wounded toward
ambulances.
The attack occurred before noon, when a man carrying a black bag crossed the
street in front of the Sharon Mall in the seaside city of Netanya. An off-duty
security guard waiting at a red light noticed the man and alerted police in the
car behind him ¡ª in a scene caught on security cameras and broadcast on Israel's
Channel Two TV.
"Within a second, I knew he looked suspicious," the driver, Nir Hudra, told
The Associated Press.
Policewoman Shoshi Attia got out of her car and approached the man, but he
started running, she said.
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