First bombing in Israeli town shatters desert calm

Middle East Features

Feb 4, 2008, 15:11 GMT

Tel Aviv - Israel's current nightmare came true Monday, when a loud explosion shattered the calm of the remote desert town of Dimona and it became the latest city in the Jewish state to suffer a suicide bombing. 'I was looking at clothes in a store and heard a boom. I thought it might have been a gas balloon. Then I heard people shouting. I realized what had happened. I saw a lot of blood at the entrance and a woman without a leg,' said a woman identified only as Natali. At around 10.30 am (0830 GMT) a suicide bomber in the shopping centre in the town pressed the detonator on his explosive charge and blew himself into smithereens, killing one passer-by and wounding 11 other people. A second bomber, who was also wounded in the initial blast, was shot dead by a police officer, first in the head, and then, as he still struggled to press his detonator, four more times. His explosive belt remained on his body, causing a tricky situation for paramedics called to the scene along with 20 ambulances to treat the wounded. 'I moved away and pushed the crowd away, and immediately alerted (first aid) forces. It was difficult for us to attend to the injured at first, as the two terrorists were lying there and we were afraid that the device would explode next to us,' said Saloman Amar. Sappers sent immediately to the scene cleared the crowd and tried delicately to neutralize the device. Dimona, the site of Israel's nuclear reactor, is located about 50 kilometres east of the Sinai peninsula and about 50 kilometres south east of the Gaza Strip, from where the last suicide bomber to strike Israel, on January 29 2007, came, and from where the two Monday also originated. Southern Israel has been on the alert for militant attacks for nearly two weeks, since Gaza-based gunmen blasted huge breaches in the concrete and metal border fence separating the Strip from Egypt and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians crossed in to the Sinai desert, the vast majority to shop for items made scarce by a tight Israeli siege of the salient. But Egyptian police have nabbed 15 militants with weapons and explosives in the peninsula since Friday and Israeli officials fear there could be more at large, trying to make their way into Israel. The al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigades claimed responsibility for the bombing, saying it was carried out in conjunction with two other militant factions. Al-Aqsa is the militant wing of the Fatah party, whose leader, President Mahmoud Abbas, has pledged to try reach a peace agreement with Israel by the end of 2008. But Abbas will have a hard time imposing his will and agenda on the increasing independent Fatah military wing, especially on those in the Gaza Strip. Al-Aqsa militants in the salient are becoming increasingly radical, sometimes sounding closer to Hamas, which administers the enclave and does not recognize Israel's right to exist, than to the moderate Abbas. In Israel, voices were also raised for ending the peace talks with the Palestinians, recently restarted after a seven year lull. But despite a call by Trade and Industry Minister Eli Yishai, leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party in the coalition to break off negotiations, a spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry said peace talks would continue. Yishai did not issue any ultimatum as he did over negotiations on Jerusalem. But, with the Gaza border now no longer hermetically sealed, more suicide bombings in the future may lead him to do so, and Olmert, who needs the right-leaning Shas' 12 seats in his coalition for political survival, may find it difficult to deflect such demands.

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before...Feb 4th, 2008 - 19:12:37

anybody starts screaming about a raid on the Zionist nuclear weapons facility, it is miles away from the town of Dimona. The site is so secure a rat couldn't get in. The no-fly zone is so tight that they have shot down their own airforce jets that flew too close. You can't even get good Google map shots of the area. A narrow strip covering the site is so distorted it looks like a pepperoni piza. Talk about paranoia to the extreme, as if Google maps is a security hole.

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before...Feb 4th, 2008 - 20:13:56

Opps, I made a mistake. Google maps now shows the Israeli nuclear weapons site, in some detail. This wasn't true a short time ago.

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Just a matter of timeFeb 5th, 2008 - 02:15:51

The zionist state has to give rights orthodox Jewish, Christians, and Muslims. They are close to perrishing as mentioned in Torah.

www.jewsagainstzionism.com/

is worth looking at.

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First bombing in Israeli town shatters desert calm

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