Small Bomb Packed With Nails Injures 21 in Tel Aviv

A small bomb packed with nails exploded during morning rush hour near a busy intersection here Thursday, injuring 21 people, one of them seriously.

The explosion shattered windows and sent debris flying into traffic, but police said most of the injuries were relatively minor. The bomb, concealed in a garbage bin outside a candy shop, blew up just after a city bus dropped off a number of people at a nearby stop, but police said that most of the passengers had dispersed.

One woman remained in intensive care late Thursday at a Tel Aviv hospital, where she was being treated for burns, officials said. Other victims, including a pregnant woman and a 17-month-old child, were treated for shock or cuts from flying glass.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility. But police officials said a preliminary investigation pointed toward the involvement of Palestinian militant groups, which recently have renewed threats to attack Israelis.

Hours after the blast, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the injured in Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital and called on the Palestinian Authority to intensify its fight against terrorism or risk what remains of the faltering peace process.

In recent days, Israel and the Palestinians had appeared to be making at least limited progress toward a long-delayed agreement on withdrawing Israeli troops from more territory in the West Bank. But after Thursday’s blast, Netanyahu reiterated that Israel will not cede the additional land without iron-clad security guarantees.

“There will be no agreement between us and the Palestinians without a comprehensive Palestinian war against terror, a war of action, not only of words,” the Israeli leader said.

Extremist groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have carried out more than a dozen suicide bombings against Israelis in recent years in an effort to scuttle the peace process launched in 1993.

Palestinian Authority officials denounced Thursday’s attack. Its president, Yasser Arafat, told visiting Israeli Labor Party legislator Salah Tarif that he condemned the bombing and did not believe it had been carried out by Palestinians.

On Wednesday, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the leader of the Hamas movement and a powerful rival to Arafat, told a rally of several hundred supporters in the Gaza Strip that his group would launch attacks against Israel in retaliation for the U.S. missile strikes Aug. 20 in Afghanistan and Sudan.

After Thursday’s bombing here, a Hamas official in Gaza said he did not know who was responsible but stopped short of condemning the attack. Ismail abu Shanab, a spokesman for the movement’s political wing, said Israel itself was to blame for the violence against its citizens.

“This operation is a normal reaction to Israeli aggression, and it is the beginning of a long road,” Abu Shanab said. “Our people cannot stay quiet in the face of Israeli aggression.”

Israeli police already had been on heightened alert since last week’s U.S. missile strikes, but officials said the level of security would be further increased.

Police said the bomb carried only about a pound of explosives but was packed with nails and metal shards in order to injure as many people as possible. It went off at 8:40 a.m., as people were hurrying to work at the many small shops and cafes in the area, near the intersection of Allenby and Rothschild streets in downtown Tel Aviv.

As shaken workers and residents examined the damage later, several said they believed that the attack was the result of Arab and Muslim anger at the United States and Israel in the wake of the missile strikes.

Yosef Haglili, 72, stood in front of his barbershop, which was damaged in the explosion, and offered a gloomy assessment.

“The Arabs want peace with us, but this isn’t peace,” Haglili said. “As long as we are strong, we will fight to stay here. But this won’t stop. It will never stop.”