Bomb Kills 1, Hurts 9 in Jerusalem : Terrorism: The targeted Jewish market was crowded with shoppers. Israeli officials seek to link the blast to the opening of an Arab summit.

A homemade pipe bomb exploded at a juice stand in a crowded market Monday, killing an elderly Israeli, wounding at least nine other shoppers and raising fears of an accelerated spin on the cycle of violence between Israelis and Arabs.

Israeli officials had been bracing for an attack like this ever since a deranged Israeli gunman shot and killed seven Palestinian workers on a roadside in Rishon le Zion, near Tel Aviv. Another bomb was also found Monday in a bus station at Rishon le Zion, but police defused it.

Despite the possible revenge motive, government officials linked the explosion with the opening of the an Arab League summit meeting in Baghdad, Iraq.

“It is meant to demonstrate that the groups are fighting here and remind the Arabs they need support,” said Yosef Ben-Aharon, a top aide to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

In one message, a shadowy Palestinian group called the Fatah Uprising claimed responsibility for planting of the bomb. However, its account of the incident to a news agency was wrong: The group, which is backed by Syria, said the time bomb was placed in a bus.

A government spokesman said it was not yet clear who planted the bomb.

Just before 12:30 p.m., the bomb went off in a garbage can at the covered Mahane Yehuda market, a warren of fruit, nut, meat and vegetable stalls in a central Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem. Shards of glass and metal flew into the closely packed crowd of shoppers, many of whom were shopping in anticipation of the Jewish spring holiday of Shavuot this week.

The victim who died, a 72-year-old man named Shimon Cohen, succumbed to wounds to the liver.

“I was weighing a box of grapes for a woman, a client. Suddenly there was a boom,” recalled vendor Yoram Shabtai. “The box of grapes flew out of my hand. The woman stumbled a little. I was blown to the wall. I saw two people hurt badly. I saw one was losing a lot of blood.”

Aviel Abuhatzeira, 8, who was recovering from shrapnel wounds in his right thigh, told reporters at a hospital: “I felt like it was a dream. Everything was blurred.”

The boy’s father was also treated for minor leg wounds.

Shopkeepers quickly carried the wounded out of the market to ambulances that rushed to the scene as police rounded up more than 80 Arab market workers and passers-by. Irate Israelis pounded on police vans and chanted “Death to Arabs!” and “Burn them! Burn them!”

“We will not allow any acts of revenge,” Police Commissioner Yaakov Turner warned in a radio broadcast. Police reinforcements were posted in the city to prevent attacks on Arabs.

At the market, several press photographers were assaulted by the crowd, and one photographer was hospitalized after being beaten and kicked. A photographer for the Associated Press was beaten and then released by assailants only after he turned his film over to them, the news agency reported.

A government press spokesman expressed his “sadness” at the assaults. Much of the anti-press violence was attributed to supporters of the ultra-nationalist Kach movement, which has an office near the market.

Rightist Israeli politicians said the atrocity showed that proposed Mideast peace talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization cannot go forward.

“The attempt to kill innocent people shows the true colors of the PLO,” said Eliakim Haetzneh, a member of the Knesset (Parliament) from a party that wants to annex the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Dovish Israeli politicians, thrown suddenly on the defensive, urged Palestinian leaders to speak out against such acts. “They have to restrain their people,” said Yair Tsaban, a member of the leftist Mapam party.

In Washington, the State Department denounced the bombing as “cowardly and barbaric” and said it “demonstrates again the importance of engaging in realistic and workable steps toward a viable peace process. . . . “

A group of Palestinian political leaders holding a hunger strike to protest last week’s slayings of Palestinians condemned the blast and dissociated the PLO from it. The PLO has pledged to desist from terrorism, and the promise is a condition of the group’s continuing dialogue with the United States.

“This is very bad. We roundly reject attacks on civilians,” said Faisal Husseini, a top public leader of the 29-month-old Arab uprising in the occupied territories and a contact for the PLO.

The Palestinians also tried to shift a measure of blame to the Israeli government for rejecting American-brokered overtures to talk peace. Radwan abu Ayash, another PLO supporter who is fasting, remarked: “This shows where the Israeli government rejection of peace negotiations leads.”

It had been two years since the last terrorist bomb went off in Jerusalem, although . other bombs have been set off since then on roadsides elsewhere in Israel.

NEXT STEP

The U.N. Security Council is scheduled to reconvene today in New York to discuss the recent surge of violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Last week, it debated the issue at a two-day emergency meeting in Geneva but failed to reach a conclusion. The Palestine Liberation Organization, led by Yasser Arafat, is trying to get the Security Council to dispatch envoys to the territories to investigate the violence and Israel’s treatment of Arabs.