Blast rocks Israeli city, three dead

JERUSALEM - An explosion killed three people and wounded more than 45 in the heart of the Israeli coastal city of Netanya last night, a day after Islamic militants vowed to launch fresh attacks against Israel.

Ambulances rushed to the site of the blast, not far from the scene of an explosion on New Year's Day which wounded dozens of people and for which the Islamic group Hamas claimed responsibility.

The Netanya blast was the most serious in Israel since February 14 when a Palestinian driver smashed his bus into a crowd of Israeli soldiers and commuters at a bus stop in the central Israel town of Azur, killing eight people.

The Netanya fire commander, Moshe Yosef, and witnesses said the blast appeared to have been caused by a bomb placed on a footpath rather than in a car or bus.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast.

Israeli police said hours earlier that they had reinforced patrols along the West Bank border and at public places in the face of a threat by Palestinian suicide bombers to strike at Israel.

Hamas said in a leaflet that 10 suicide bombers from its military wing were poised to attack once right-winger Ariel Sharon became Prime Minister.

The Hamas Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades said in the leaflet that more than 10 "potential martyrs" were ready to "strike the Zionist depths with their bodies and this will not take long."

"We will not remain in the status of self-defence for long," said the leaflet.

"We will exceed it to the status of attack ... This puzzle will not take long. The world will see it on the first day the criminal Sharon takes power."

Hamas has taken responsibility for years of suicide attacks in which scores of Israelis have been killed and wounded.

The latest deaths raised to at least 340 the number of Palestinians killed along with 62 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs in a Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule that flared more than five months ago.

Sharon, elected last month, is scrambling to meet an end-of-March deadline for forming a broad coalition to battle the uprising.

Last week, the centre-left Labour Party agreed to join a Sharon-led government with Labour's Shimon Peres as foreign minister and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer as defence minister hoping to restore calm and pursue peace.

Sharon's negotiators held talks with parliamentary factions over the weekend.

Israel Radio said the former general, frustrated by demands from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Shas party, had decided to invite the secular Shinui faction to join his coalition. On Friday, he reached a deal with two right-wing ultra-nationalist parties.

The Israeli Army went on heightened alert after the threat of suicide attacks.

- REUTERS

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