Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed to hit back hard against Palestinian militants after at least 15 people died in a suicide bombing that yesterday undermined new Middle East peace efforts.
The Israeli leader was meeting US President George W. Bush at the White House when the bomb tore through a billiard hall in Rishon Letzion, south of Tel Aviv, on Tuesday night.
Sharon cut short his visit to Washington and declared shortly before flying home that Israel would not surrender to "blackmail."
"He who rises up to kill us, we will pre-empt it and kill him first," he said. "Israel will continue to uproot the terror infrastructure."
Sharon came under fresh international criticism for the Israeli army's recent six-week offensive in the West Bank, with the UN voting to condemn it.
The bombing clouded painstaking efforts to end the army's more than five-week-old siege of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, where a deal that would take militants trapped inside into exile was on hold until a country could be found to take them.
The bomb attack was the first in Israel in nearly a month and took place as military action had given way to diplomacy.
An Israeli police spokeswoman said the device, packed with nails and metal shards, killed 14 people as well as the bomber and wounded at least 60. Israel army radio later said another person, a woman, had died but police could not confirm this.
"They [witnesses] noticed a stranger. He had an odd expression. He walked three to four steps inside and detonated his explosives. There was no time to get away," a police spokesman said.
The suicide bomb attack was the sixth since Israel launched an offensive on March 29 aimed at hunting down Palestinian militants behind a wave of bombings.
In a second incident yesterday morning, a suspected Palestinian suicide bomber was badly hurt when explosives he was carrying blew up prematurely, Israeli security sources said.
No one else was hurt in the explosion, which occurred at a bus stop north of the West Bank city of Jenin.
The bombing will give Sharon fresh ammunition in his bid to sideline Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, even though the Palestinian Authority condemned it and vowed to act against those behind it.
But it will also raise questions about the effectiveness of Israel's recent military onslaught against Palestinian towns.
Israeli forces have stopped at least one suicide bomb every day for the past week, security officials said. But Sharon is certain to face criticism from right-wing Israeli politicians that he wound down the West Bank offensive too quickly, without finishing the declared task of eliminating militants.
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