Fierce battle erupts after suicide blast

JERUSALEM - Just days after a suicide bombing killed 15 Israeli civilians in a Jerusalem pizzeria, another Palestinian walked into a cafe north of Haifa yesterday, immolating himself and wounding 15 Israeli teenagers.

Also yesterday, Palestinian hospital officials said Israeli soldiers shot dead an 8-year-old Palestinian girl during a fierce gun battle in the divided West Bank city of Hebron.

Israeli soldiers wounded a further 12 people in Hebron when they traded fire with Palestinian gunmen. The Army said two border police had also been hurt in the firefight.

Just as the Sbarro pizza house was packed with families when the bomber arrived on Friday, the Wall Street Cafe at Kiryat Moskin was crowded with young people in the early evening local time when 28-year old Muhammad Nasr climbed from a taxi and walked towards the cafe before setting off his bomb - which had been concealed around his waist.

Though the bomber was the only fatality, the implications for Israel were grim.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, which claimed the attack, promised further bombings. Not only did the explosion occur after the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, had arrested four "activists", but Nasr's father, Mahmoud, revealed to reporters that his son had been working for Arafat's own security services until just six weeks ago.

The parallels with Friday's attack were frightening. The Sbarro pizzeria stood on the corner of two major roads, Jaffa St and King George's St. The Wall Street Cafe was on the corner of another intersection, Jerusalem St and Ben Gurion Boulevard north of Haifa. Suicide bombers, it seems, prefer two approaches to their targets.

The white taxi which carried Nasr to the cafe was still being sought yesterday.

Most of the wounded were hit by fragments of the cafe's windows and only one was reported to be in serious condition.

Aharon Roseman, the owner of the cafe, said he saw the bomber approach the terrace and activate a fuse strapped to his body.

"I grabbed a chair and threw it at him and ran behind a wall - and that's what saved me," he said.

Had Nasr been able to penetrate the cafe building itself, there would certainly have been deaths.

In the routine language of Islamic Jihad, Sheikh Abdullah Shami, one of its leaders, later stated that Nasr had been "able to penetrate into the heart of Zionism with all its security measures."

If the casualties were mercifully light compared to Friday's bombing, however, the message was just as grim for the Israelis: the suiciders are still active.

Arafat's Palestinian security forces had arrested four Hamas and Islamic Jihad members on Sunday and only hours before the attack in Kiryat Moskin, Israeli police set up roadblocks around Haifa.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's contention that the Israeli occupation of Orient House, the most important Palestinian office in Jerusalem, was permanent was met with a demand by the United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, that Israel should leave the building.

Palestinians in Jerusalem are planning large demonstrations against the seizure of Orient House and may be joined by members of the Israeli "Peace Now" movement, who protested yesterday.

Palestinian officials were again abandoning police compounds in the West Bank and Gaza yesterday for fear the Israelis would choose to retaliate for the Haifa bombing with further air strikes.

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank closed stores and offices last night in protest against Israel's takeover of the Palestinian headquarters in Jerusalem.

United States envoy David Satterfield has been shuttling between the two sides' leaders trying to stop the spiralling bloodshed.

He was due to meet Arafat today after talks with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Sharon.

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS

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