Bomb Kills 16 in Jerusalem Pizzeria

A Palestinian blew himself up in a crowded downtown Jerusalem pizzeria at lunchtime Thursday, killing 15 other people, including several children and one American.

It was the bloodiest attack in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 22 people were killed in a June 1 suicide bombing outside a Tel Aviv disco. Hospitals reported treating more than 100 people injured in the attack, many of them suffering from shock. By this morning, 30 people were still hospitalized, one in critical condition.

The militant Islamic movement Hamas claimed responsibility for the blast, but Israel blamed the Palestinian Authority.

Early this morning, Israeli security forces seized control of Palestinian Authority offices in East Jerusalem and Abu Dis, a village on Jerusalem’s outskirts. Israeli F-16 warplanes destroyed a Palestinian police building with missiles near the West Bank city of Ramallah. Palestinians reported no injuries in that attack.

Palestinian officials warned that Israel’s response to the suicide bombing could provoke further escalation in the fighting.

The Bush administration, Russia and European governments condemned the bombing, coupling their expressions of outrage and sorrow for the victims with pleas that both sides exercise restraint.

Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat also condemned the killings and called for a joint truce declaration with Israel. But Israeli officials brushed aside his call, saying he was responsible. Cabinet Secretary Gideon Saar told reporters that Israel’s attack on Palestinian offices was a message to Arafat that he must fight terror.

Shortly after the restaurant bombing, Palestinians declared a state of emergency in major West Bank and Gaza Strip cities, and their security forces fled offices and outposts in expectation of a harsh Israeli reaction.

Israel’s response was decided during a stormy late-night Cabinet meeting called by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Sharon and right-wing members of the Cabinet wanted a wide-scale response, while Labor ministers argued for restraint.

One of the offices seized this morning, Orient House, is seen by the Palestinian Authority as its official presence in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians hope will be the capital of a future Palestinian state. Israel Radio said seven guards at Orient House were detained, documents were confiscated and the building sealed off.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and two other Labor Party members of the Cabinet voted against seizing Palestinian offices and destroying the police station. But Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, also a Labor Party member, voted with the majority in favor of the moves.

Transportation Minister Ephraim Sneh, a Labor minister, said Israel needed to “use reason” in its retaliation and should continue its policy of targeting wanted militants for attack.

Still, horrified and enraged by the scenes of carnage that replayed on their television screens all day, Israelis seemed ready for something more far-reaching.

“This time, I don’t think that Mr. Sharon will exercise restraint,” Hemi Shalev, a political analyst for the Maariv newspaper, said in an interview on CNN.

Thursday’s blast came at midday, when the Sbarro pizzeria, part of a New York-based chain, was packed with diners. The bomber entered with the bomb in a bag over his shoulder, which he placed on a counter. He then detonated the bomb and was killed instantly, police said.

Police cleared several blocks of Jerusalem’s commercial district of pedestrians and closed off Jaffa and King George V streets, two main roads outside the restaurant, for several hours as bomb squads searched for other explosives. Scores of emergency workers evacuated the dead and injured and cleared the area of body parts, glass and debris.

Emergency workers treated the wounded in the streets before loading them into ambulances. Many of the injured screamed and groaned in pain. Others lay still in spreading pools of blood.

Police found the body of at least one American. They identified her as Judith Greenbaum, 31, of New Jersey. Her father, Allen Hyman, told reporters outside his Los Angeles home Thursday that his only daughter was pregnant with her first child.

“In order to make a political point, these terrorists murdered our only daughter and her future child, along with 14 other people,” Hyman said. “Israel must act to preserve the lives of its citizens, and we hope that President Bush will support Israel’s efforts to defend the lives of its citizens.”

“We will reach out for the killers and we will kill them,” Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert vowed at the scene of the bombing. He was the first of a parade of Israeli officials who vowed a swift, harsh retaliation.

A small group of Israeli youths chanted, “Death to the Arabs!” near the shattered restaurant, and there were reports of some people chasing and beating Arabs in the nearby Jewish market.

On vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Bush condemned the bombing. “The deliberate murder of innocent civilians is abhorrent to all,” he said.

In statements to news agencies, Hamas said the bomber was a 22-year-old it identified as Izzedine Masri. The attack was carried out in retaliation for Israel’s so-called targeted killings of Palestinian militants, the organization said. It promised more attacks.

Israel said Arafat was to blame because he has refused to arrest potential bombers.

“It just shows you how morally right we are in taking those preventive measures [targeted killings] to stop the terrorists,” said Sharon spokesman Raanan Gissin. “Had we not taken those measures, had we listened to the advice of our friends, we would have had hundreds of people dead instead of 15.”

The Bush administration and other governments have denounced Israel’s killing of dozens of militants as illegal under international law.

Israel and the Palestinian Authority braced for an escalation of their 10-month-old conflict, which has already claimed more than 650 lives and injured thousands of people. Israel’s Foreign Ministry ordered diplomats abroad to cancel vacations and put embassies on alert.

In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, doctors were called to beef up staffing at Palestinian hospitals, and many people voiced fears that Israel might reenter parts of the territories it has handed over to the Palestinian Authority during the last seven years.

Senior Palestinian officials renewed their calls for the Bush administration to intervene and for international observers to be dispatched to calm the situation. Sharon has said he will not accept such observers.

Sharon called the Cabinet meeting after an earlier session with a handful of senior ministers failed to reach agreement on a response.

Peres had said before Thursday’s attack that he disagrees with Sharon’s refusal to talk with the Palestinian Authority until all violence ends. That policy, Peres told reporters, makes it possible for extremists to veto peace moves by carrying out the sort of assault that occurred a few hours after he made his remarks.

On Thursday night, Peres told the Cabinet that he still believes that talks should resume. He and other Labor ministers argued that a huge strike on the Palestinian Authority could cause its collapse and bring anarchy to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. However, when Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdul-Ilah Khatib called Peres to express condolences for the dead, Peres told him that Israeli intelligence believes the operator who sent Thursday’s bomber was one of the wanted men Israel had asked the Palestinian Authority to arrest weeks ago.

The atmosphere of crisis was similar to the one created June 1, when the last suicide bombing with a high Israeli death toll took place--a late-night strike outside a seaside Tel Aviv disco popular with Russian immigrants. At that time, Israel refrained from a massive response after the European Union and the Bush administration launched diplomatic efforts to secure a cease-fire. But the cease-fire never took hold.

Recent days have brought an intensifying spiral of violence, with Israel hunting down Palestinian militants and Palestinians attempting bombings in Israel and carrying out shooting attacks in Israel and the West Bank. Israeli security forces have been on high alert, and a number of would-be bombers were foiled. Others blew themselves up without serious harm to other people.

This time, the bomber struck at the very heart of Jerusalem, the seat of most of Israel’s government institutions, on a blazing hot summer day when the downtown was filled with shoppers. His victims were families, many of them large, religiously observant Jewish families who frequent the kosher Sbarro pizza and pasta buffet.

A 27-year-old off-duty policeman who was across the street when the blast occurred said he rushed to help.

“There were very hard things to see,” said the officer, who gave only his first name, Raanan. “I saw a baby stroller going up in the air. We tried to get out all the kids. People were on the floor, parts of bodies were on the floor. It was like a meat shop in there.”

Among the dead, police said, were French Jews who had come to Israel to show solidarity in these turbulent times. Others killed ranged from small children to the elderly. A 62-year-old woman and a 15-year-old girl were the first two identified by police. Five members of one family that recently emigrated from the Netherlands were killed and two were seriously injured, according to police.

It was the deadliest attack in Jerusalem since November, when a bomb exploded in the Jewish market, killing two people.

Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed-Rabbo blamed Sharon’s policies for the attack. The Palestinian Authority, he said, condemns the killing of any civilians, Israeli or Palestinian.

But Palestinian leaders repeatedly warned in recent weeks that the targeting of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants by Israeli forces was making it impossible to rein in those groups and creating widespread sympathy among the Palestinian public for revenge attacks.

The Jerusalem bombing was not the only reported killing Thursday. An Israeli soldier was slain in a drive-by shooting near the West Bank town of Tulkarm. In another drive-by shooting, a 19-year-old Israeli woman was killed and three others injured near Kibbutz Merav, inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders. Israel destroyed a Palestinian police post in Tulkarm by firing on it with tanks, wounding two security officers.

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Also contributing to this report was Times staff writer Oscar Johnson in Los Angeles.

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Restaurant Attack

A pizzeria at the intersection of Jaffa and King

George V streets in downtown Jerusalem was crowded with parents and children at lunchtime when a Palestinian suicide bomber set off an explosion.

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MORE INSIDE

U.S. take: The White House calls for punishment and restraint. A10

Day of chaos: Frantic searches for relatives follow the blast. A11