TEL AVIV, Israel – A homicide bomber carrying 20 pounds of explosives blew himself up outside a Tel Aviv nightclub last night, killing at least four other people, wounding 50 and shattering the Mideast truce.
A senior commander of a Palestinian militant group said the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah, which has been trying to disrupt the truce, hired a Palestinian from the northern West Bank to do the bombing.
Palestinian security officials also blamed Hezbollah.
The horrific blast occurred at 11:20 p.m. as 20 to 30 people were waiting to get into The Stage nightclub near Tel Aviv’s beachfront promenade.
The bomber was among those in line and when security guards became suspicious, he blew himself up. The blast ripped off the front of the nightclub, shattered windows of nearby restaurants and blackened cars.
“There was a huge explosion. I shook,” said Ian Benardo, 24, from Riverdale in The Bronx, who was walking by.
“There were all these people lying on the ground. I saw parts of people – heads and arms and legs. There was blood everywhere. It was absolutely out of control.”
Benardo, who is spending six months in Israel, said he immediately took off his shirt and tried to help a badly injured young woman lying on the ground.
“She was bleeding everywhere and her eyes were rolling into the back of her head,” he said. “I gave her water. She kept mumbling, ‘Blood, blood,’ over and over again. I turned away to get her more water and when I turned back, she was dead.”
Police said all that was left of the bomber was his legs.
Israeli officials indicated the attack would not derail peace efforts.
The bombing put new pressure on Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to take action against militants who have not accepted a cease-fire that went into effect last month.
Abbas vowed today to track down those responsible for the blast, which he called “an act of sabotage toward the peace process.”
“The Palestinian Authority will not stand silent in the face of this act of sabotage. We will follow and track down those responsible and they will be punished accordingly,” he said.
The senior commander who implicated Hezbollah is a leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, which is loosely tied to Abbas’ Fatah party and has largely backed the truce.
Supporting the commander’s claim, Palestinian security officials said they had tracked recent communications between Hezbollah militant Kais Obeid and a Palestinian who they believed was the bomber. They did not name him.
A Hezbollah official in Beirut denied involvement, saying, “As far as we are concerned, there is no need to respond to such lies.”
The blast tore apart an area jammed with young Israelis trying to get into the several bars and discos on the night that most Israelis go out.
“We passed the crosswalk and suddenly there was a huge explosion,” a witness told Israel’s Army Radio. “The whole area of the club was destroyed. Debris fell to the ground and cars were smashed.”
Emergency workers arrived on the scene to find dozens of wounded, many of them young people, piled atop one another.
“I saw the security guard covered with blood and pieces of flesh – maybe it was his own blood,” another witness said.
Police were looking for two possible accomplices.
The blast was the first homicide bombing in Israel since Nov. 1. It occurred about 300 yards from the Dolphinarium disco where 20 Israelis died in a June 2001 homicide bombing. With Post Wire Services