Tel Aviv, June 2
In the relentless blood-letting in the Middle East, a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a popular beach-side discotheque here leaving 18 dead and over 100 injured, the police and eyewitnesses said.
Israeli army ordered the immediate closure of West Bank and Gaza Strip and turned back Palestinian workers with permits to work inside Israel in the wake of last night’s attack.
Eyewitnesses said the suicide bomber entered a queue of people waiting to get into the discotheque and detonated himself within minutes.
The victims, most of them teenagers, had flocked the nightclub since it was the weekend. Pools of blood splattered the floor and severed body limbs scattered all over the place.
Israel blamed the Palestinian authority for failing to stop the violence but Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat condemned the attack this morning.
“We condemn these attacks against civilians and call on all to practice restraint, stop escalation, end the military siege, end all forms of violence and go back to the negotiating table with emphasis on the basis of the Egyptian-Jordanian proposal and the Mitchell report,” Mr Arafat said in a statement.
US President George W. Bush strongly condemned the incident.
“I condemn in a strongest term the heinous terrorist attack in Tel Aviv this Sabbath evening,” he said in statement issued from Camp David, Maryland.
Mr Annan said he was “horrified” The bombing underlined “the urgency of breaking the cycle of violence’’.
“He condemns this indiscriminate terrorist attack in the strongest possible terms,’’ Annan’s office said in a statement.
The Israeli Cabinet called an emergency meeting today to consider decisions to be taken in the wake of the bombing, Israeli television said.
PTI
