At least 19 killed in Tel Aviv blast

9.00am

UPDATE - TEL AVIV - Two Palestinian suicide bombers killed at least 19 people and injured more than 100 in back-to-back explosions in a crowded district of downtown Tel Aviv on Sunday.

The blasts tore through the old bus station and nearby pedestrian mall two minutes apart, leaving bodies strewn about, shops in ruins and people fleeing in panic in an area frequented by foreign workers in Israel's largest city.

It was the first such attack for six weeks in Israel and came in the approach to a January 28 general election at a time when security is paramount to many Israelis more than two years into a Palestinian uprising for statehood.

On November 21 a young militant blew himself up and killed 11 people on a bus in a Jerusalem suburb. Sunday's carnage followed threats of revenge by Palestinian militant groups for a surge in killings of their comrades in Israeli army raids in the West Bank last week and a spate of punitive demolitions of houses belonging to militant families.

US officials have been calling on both sides in the intractable conflict for restraint to help Washington prepare the ground in the Middle East for a possible war to disarm Iraq.

At least 102 people were wounded -- some seriously but some just in shock -- when one suicide bomber struck the teeming mall area and the second the old bus station 150m away, police in the Mediterranean coastal city said.

The ground was coated with pieces of flesh together with nuts, bolts and ball bearings -- the lethal projectiles usually packed into bombs used by suicide militants in the uprising.

"We had a double explosion, two suicide bombers blowing themselves up in tandem. The time difference was very close," national police spokesman Gil Kleiman said on the scene.

"From the extent of the damage on the scene...they were very strong explosive devices. In each case metal fragments were added to the explosives to increase the amount of death."

A Lebanon-based television station said it had received a claim of responsibility from the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad.

The Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat condemned the attack as "terrorist", rejecting blame again hurled at it by Israel's rightwing-led government.

People were sprawled on the street and in the station, some apparently dead and others nursing wounds to arms and legs.

Panic-stricken crowds fled the scene, trampling some people underfoot in their haste.

Nearby buildings were battered by the blasts and even people inside houses and shops were among the wounded.

Foreign workers -- mainly east European, African, Thai and Chinese -- predominate in the targeted neighbourhood and there was no early word on the identity of the dead.

"We are talking about a low-income neighbourhood, a shopping mall where people were out doing their final shopping of the day and sitting in bars and restaurants," Kleiman said.

A Chinese restaurant sign streaked with blood lay broken on the ground amid collapsed shop facades and awnings. Boxes were strewn about and trails of blood ran in various directions.

Funeral service workers with rubber gloves and flashlights peered rooted through the detritus in search of body parts while police led bomb-sniffing dogs around the area.

"I heard the explosion, I felt the shock wave. I realised there would be many casualties. We looked for people who were breathing. I called over to them. I counted quite a few seriously wounded," eyewitness Alon Oz told Army radio.

"I have been to a lot of these scenes but this is one of the bloodiest I have come upon," said a burial service worker.

"The people who chose this place wanted to cause the most terrible result. What we have seen today is that Palestinian terrorism is trying to kill as many people as possible," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said at the scene.

The right-wing Israeli government has consistently accused the Palestinian Authority of inciting or failing to stop suicide bombers but it has denied doing so and a senior Palestinian official denounced the Tel Aviv bloodshed.

"The Palestinian Authority reiterates its position of condemning the killing of civilians whether Israelis or Palestinians," said Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat, a close aide to Arafat.

"We have been urging the international community to help us stop the Israeli escalation against the Palestinian people which led to the killing of more than 20 Palestinians in the past 10 days," he told Reuters in the West Bank.

He accused Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government of stepping up military operations against the uprising to sabotage talks in Cairo between Palestinian militant factions on a possible ceasefire.

Sharon accused the Palestinian Authority of responsibility for failures to forge a truce so far. "Only when the terror is stopped will we be able to talk peace," he told a group of young foreign Jews visiting Jerusalem.

- REUTERS

Herald feature: The Middle East