Explosion rocks Tel Aviv

12.00pm

TEL AVIV - A suicide bombing killed several people and wounding dozens on a seaside promenade in Israel's largest city Tel Aviv early today, police said.

The blast in the early hours of the morning came hours after the Palestinian parliament approved a new Palestinian reform cabinet, and followed a pledge by Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas to rein in militants blamed for previous attacks on Israel.

"It was an attack by a suicide bomber who blew himself up at the entrance of a pub called Mike's Place near the US embassy," police commander Yossi Sedbon told Israel Radio. "We know of about 15 wounded and a small number of people killed."

Sedbon said the bomber carried a medium-size bomb packed with nails and other shrapnel.

Rescue workers at the scene said there were at least three bodies at the scene, one of them apparently the bomber, and that up to 30 people had been taken for treatment.

Footage of the scene showed medics treating young Israelis on the sidewalk outside the pub.

"We saw several young men, burned up, coming out of the pub. We were in a nearby nightclub, waiting for a friend at the entrance. And then 10 metres from here, we saw fire coming out of the bar, people all burned up running out," a witness told Israel Radio.

The blast occurred near the site of the Dolphinarium nightclub bombing in June 2001 that killed 21 people, mostly young Russian immigrants.

Under heavy international pressure, the Palestinian parliament overwhelmingly approved Abbas' new cabinet on Tuesday in a crucial step toward launching a new US-backed Middle East peace plan.

But Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, responsible for many attacks on Israelis in a 31-month-old Palestinian uprising for independence, said they would not give up their weapons, in a challenge to Abbas' plans.

Last Thursday, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up at an Israeli train station, killing a security guard and injuring 13 people in an attack condemned by Abbas.

An armed faction of President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) claimed responsibility for that explosion, the first attack in Israel in nearly a month.

That blast also appeared to be intended as a direct challenge to the first Palestinian prime minister, coming just a day after the power-sharing deal between Abbas and Arafat that ushered in Tuesday's approval of the cabinet.

- REUTERS