Blast in Israeli city leaves nine injured

Blast in Israeli city leaves nine injured
REUTERS

JERUSALEM, JANUARY 17: An explosion in a rubbish bin in the northern Israeli city of Hadera wounding nine people on Monday, the police said. The blast is being seen as a Palestinian militant attack by the police.

The police said the device was left in a rubbish bin outside a bank near the city's main market. It went off an hour before noon when the area was crowded with shoppers.

Doctors at the local hospital in Hadera, which is about 40 km south of the Port of Haifa, said they were treating nine people for injuries, all of them escaped with minor injuries.

The police and firefighters immediately sealed off the area to search for any other bombs.

Prime Minister Ehud Barak said he took a "grave view of the incident". "The government headed by me is determined to act with all its might in order to smash terrorism and use all the security branches at its disposal to fight it," his office quoted him as saying in a statement. Ehud Yatom, a senior municipal official in Hadera and former officer inIsrael's Shin Bet security service, said he believed the device was a pipe bomb.

He linked the blast to a pipe bomb explosion on November 7 which wounded at least 14 people in the nearby coastal town of Netanya a day before Israel and the Palestinians began talks on a final peace settlement.

Meanwhile, Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy on Monday met a delegation from the European Union which is currently visiting Israel as part of a regional tour aimed at demonstrating the EU's involvement in the peace process and its interests in the region. Israel radio reported that the EU would like to be involved in the current Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations, in particular the issues of water rights and security arrangements, confidence-building steps, and the economic development of the Golan heights, expected to be handed back to Syria as part of a peace treaty.