Hell on earth as Easter bomber strikes; Israeli troops ignore UN call

A huge explosion caused by a suicide bomber ripped through a Tel Aviv restaurant last night as Israel kept Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat under siege in his shattered West Bank headquarters.

Medical workers said more than 29 people had been wounded. Police reported that the bomber had died in the blast at My Coffee Shop on Allenby Street in the centre of the coastal city. First reports said the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a militia group linked to Arafat's Fatah movement, had claimed responsibility.

The attack came during the Jewish Passover holiday and at the end of the Sabbath, when Israelis often go out to restaurants and entertainment spots. It also came one day after Israeli tanks and troops stormed into Arafat's headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah in what Israel said was a response to a suicide bombing on Wednesday that killed 22 Israelis.

Shortly after last night's explosion, aides to the Palestinian president said Israeli troops had given warning that they planned to storm Arafat's office within one hour. This warning came despite a UN Security Council resolution passed earlier yesterday calling on both sides to move immediately towards a ceasefire and calling for Israel to withdraw from Ramallah and other Palestinian-ruled cities. It was passed by 14 votes to nil, with the support of the United States - the second time in a month that Washington has backed a UN resolution on the Middle East after years of abstaining.

US envoy Anthony Zinni has been trying to broker a ceasefire to halt 18 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence in which 1112 Palestinians and 383 Israelis have died.

Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said last night that after the explosion "the commander of the invading force surrounding President Arafat's headquarters gave an ultimatum, by which they will storm into the headquarters to arrest whoever they want".

"This step is a plan by [Israeli Prime Minster Ariel] Sharon against President Arafat's life. This is a very grave step."

In a statement, Fatah vowed an "unimaginable" response if Israel harmed its besieged leader, and said it had ordered a "general mobilisation" of its followers. It warned that Palestinians would respond to any attempt to harm Arafat in a way that Israel's "government of killers" could not imagine. In Ramallah, Arafat remained confined to two rooms in his compound without electricity or water, just yards from Israeli soldiers both above and below his floor.

"I appeal to the international community to stop this aggression against our people," he said in a candlelit television interview.

Food supplies are running low and batteries have run out for the mobile phone that was Arafat's only link to the outside world. Israeli soldiers have been hitting the three-story building with heavy machine-gun fire at sporadic intervals, said Adam Shapiro, an American volunteer medic who helped evacuate wounded guards.

Street battles raged as Israeli forces conducted house-to-house searches across the city. Earlier, the bodies of five Palestinian policemen were discovered inside a bank in Ramallah after heavy street- fighting with Israeli forces.

Israel denied Palestinian allegations that they had been executed but declared the city a closed military zone. One of Arafat's bodyguards was killed and 30 wounded in Friday's assault in Ramallah.

The Israeli action defies a resolution passed by an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council which debated the crisis for more than 10 hours yesterday before voting on the Norwegian-sponsored resolution aimed at halting the fighting. Rabbo called the resolution positive, "provided Israel implements it immediately and does not use it as a cover for procrastination and to prolong the invasion and the siege of the president". He added: "Everything depends on the Americans now."

Israel criticised the UN resolution, saying it would not pull out of Ramallah. It warned that the current offensive was just the beginning of a long campaign against Palestinian militants and said it had called up thousands of reservists.

Israeli Foreign Ministry official Gideon Meir went further, saying there must be a ceasefire and a halt to terrorist acts before the Israelis pulled out. "We will have to be in Palestinian cities to root out terror as long as the Palestinian machine is producing suicide-bombers and Palestinian mothers are proud of their children exploding themselves amongst innocent Israelis," he said.

US President George W Bush has meanwhile reiterated his view that Arafat has "to do more" to halt the violence. Speaking before the Tel Aviv blast, he said Palestinian security forces had "got to do a much better job" of preventing suicide-bombers from entering Israel.

At the same time, he said the Israelis had to find a way to end the current crisis. He urged Israelis to "make sure there is a path to peace" as they attempted to secure their homeland.

Britain meanwhile added its voice to demands that Israeli troops be withdrawn from Ramallah. A Foreign Office spokeswoman said Foreign Secretary Jack Straw had told the British ambassador in Tel Aviv to call on Ariel Sharon to obey UN demands for his troops to pull back. Straw himself had tried unsuccessfully to telephone Arafat, she added.

"He succeeded in speaking to his cabinet chief, but the line went dead before Arafat could get to the phone," a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.

Copyright 2002
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.