Suicide bomber kills 5 at Israel shopping mall

The attack dealt another blow to a shaky nine-month-old ceasefire and dented peace hopes stirred by Israel’s Gaza pullout in September.

‘‘There was a boom and there was a flash. Seconds later,people were lying on the ground, some wounded and some dead,” witness Yisrael Klein told Channel Two television. “The most horrific sight was the severed head of the terrorist.”

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon cancelled political meetings and consulted security chiefs on a military response to the attack, the second inside the Jewish state since Israel’s Gaza withdrawal.

Scrambling to keep the truce from falling apart, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the bombing as a “terrorist attack”. His office said he had “issued firm instructions to arrest those involved and those responsible… and put them on trial”.

Emergency officials put the death toll at five and said 40 people were wounded, seven of them seriously.

It was the first such bombing since October 26, when an Islamic Jihad suicide bomber killed six people in the coastal city of Hadera, just north of Netanya.

The Israeli military responded to the Hadera bombing and cross-border rocket fire from Gaza with missile strikes that killed senior militants. Islamic Jihad, sworn to Israel’s destruction, had vowed revenge. — Reuters