JERUSALEM - A Palestinian gunman shot dead three Israelis in a Tel Aviv restaurant and a suicide bomber killed one person on a bus in northern Israel yesterday as Middle East violence threatened to spiral out of control.
In a worsening cycle of tit-for-tat assaults, Israeli troops killed a Palestinian in a raid on a West Bank town and fired four missiles at a Palestinian security headquarters in the Khan Younis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. No one was reported hurt.
A Palestinian gunman killed an Israeli woman in a road ambush near in the West Bank and a bomb blast at the entrance of an Arab village near Jerusalem, possibly planted by a Jewish vigilante group, injured a schoolteacher and seven children.
The latest bloodshed followed stepped-up Israeli reprisal raids Monday in which 19 people, including a mother and her three children, were killed in response to a wave of Palestinian attacks which militants said avenged earlier Israeli killings.
The violence has shocked Israelis and Palestinians and intensified international efforts to end bloodshed that has killed at least 944 Palestinians and 311 Israelis since an uprising against Israeli occupation began in September 2000.
The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group linked to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the shooting rampage in Tel Aviv Tuesday morning, which killed three people and wounded 25.
Israeli police said a gunman fired on two restaurants and a pub on a congested strip in downtown Tel Aviv, threw grenades and attacked passers-by with a knife before being shot dead.
"We were in the middle of the club and suddenly shots rang out...I saw a terrorist firing and then my friend shot him," one man told Israel Radio.
A few hours later, a suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus in the Galilee city of Afula, killing one Israeli and wounding at least five, police said.
The blast, which also killed the bomber, took place at the city's central bus station when the bus traveling from Nazareth to Tel Aviv stopped to take on passengers. One person was moderately wounded and the rest sustained light injuries.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bus bombing but the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades said the Tel Aviv attack was "in retaliation for the massacre of the women and children in Ramallah and the massacres in Jenin."
It was referring to the Israeli army's killing of Palestinians in the West Bank, which included seven unarmed civilians in two incidents Monday. The army apologized for the latter killings, saying they were "tragic aberrations."
The new violence erupted hours after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pledged to "hit hard" at Palestinian militants as a prerequisite to peace talks.
Sharon and senior ministers were expected to consider further ways of exerting pressure on Arafat to halt militant violence.
- REUTERS
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Mideast violence spirals with new attacks
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