Explosion in Israeli town inures nine in apparent terror attack

JERUSALEM (AP) -- A bomb went off Tuesday in a restaurant in Herzliya, injuring nine people in the upscale town just north of Tel Aviv, police said.

Israel Army Radio said one person was killed, apparently a suicide bomber. Israel Radio said no one else was killed in the attack.

Police and ambulances raced to the scene. Rescue services director Avi Zohar said nine people were injured, two moderately and one in serious condition, and all had been taken to hospitals within minutes after the attack.

Joel Leyden, who arrived at the scene minutes after the blast, said the target of the attack was a small Middle East-style restaurant.

"The suicide bomber blew himself up inside the restaurant," he said.

Police found another bomb on his body and were dismantling it, moving people away from the scene first, Leyden said.

The explosion ripped through a restaurant at the corner of Socolov and Ben Gurion streets in downtown Herzliya, Israel Radio said. The beachside resort of Herzliya Pituach, where many ambassadors to Israel live, is a suburb of the town.

David Baker, an official in the Israeli Prime Minister's office, called the attack "another example of the Palestinians' intention to commit murder for the sake of murder."

"Palestinian terrorists are bent on obliterating as many Israelis as they possibly can, wherever and whenever they can," he told The Associated Press.

The bombing took place despite tight Israeli restrictions on movement in the West Bank. Israeli forces have encircled main Palestinian population centers, preventing Palestinians from moving freely around the West Bank, attempting to stop the infiltration by attackers.

Last Wednesday, a Palestinian teen-ager drove a car bomb from the northern West Bank town of Jenin onto a main Israeli highway and blew up a bus, killing himself and 17 Israelis, most of them Israeli soldiers.

The attack led to renewed pressure on the Israeli government to expedite construction of a fence to separate Israel and the West Bank.

Earlier Tuesday, three Israeli teen-agers were wounded, one seriously, when a bomb exploded at the entrance to an orchard in the West Bank, where the youths were picking cherries.