A Palestinian suicide bomber killed three people at a bus stop near Tel Aviv on Thursday minutes after Israeli helicopters killed a top Islamic militant and at least four people in Gaza.
The attacks shattered well over two months of relative calm that had spurred efforts to revive talks between Israelis and Palestinians on a US-led plan for ending more than three years of conflict.
PHOTO: AFP
The militant Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) claimed responsibility.
"This is the first operation in a series of retaliations. We swear to make an earthquake in the Zionist entity," a PFLP statement said, referring to a deadly Israeli raid on the West Bank city of Nablus last week. It described Thursday's blast as a "martyrdom operation," a standard term for suicide bombings.
Israel's police chief said the bomber killed three other people and wounded 16 in the blast at the bus stop near Petah Tikva -- "Gateway to Hope" in Hebrew -- on a highway leading out of Israel's coastal metropolis of Tel Aviv.
Two bodies lay under blankets and blood spattered the ground. The explosion reduced the bus stop to a skeletal frame and brought rush hour traffic on one of Israel's busiest roads to a stop.
"I heard a noise like a rocket and we came here and it was full of people. I saw the head of the terrorist on the bridge," said 26-year-old Lior, who lives nearby. Some onlookers in the religious neighborhood chanted "Death to Arabs."
In the last big suicide attack in Israel, on Oct. 4, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew herself up in a crowded beach restaurant in the city of Haifa, killing 23 other people.
Just minutes before the suicide bombing, Israeli helicopters struck in Gaza to kill Meqbel Hmaid, the head of the armed wing of Islamic Jihad and a top deputy of the group sworn to Israel's destruction and at the forefront of a suicide bombing campaign.
Three civilians, including one 15-year-old, also died in the missile strike on two cars, medics said.
Hundreds of Islamic Jihad fighters, who came to the mortuary in mourning for their top military commander, fired guns in the air and yelled "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) as news broke of the explosion near Tel Aviv.
"God has taken revenge," they shouted.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS