Act of a Martyr

NEANYA, Israel –– Wearing their best dresses and shirts, hats and polished shoes, about 250 people, many of them elderly, headed slowly into the seaside Park Hotel for the Passover Seder, the ritual meal at the start of the weeklong Jewish holiday.

With deadly timing, a Palestinian man carrying 40 pounds of explosives studded with metal scraps followed five minutes later.

"What are you doing here?" a desk clerk shouted at the intruder. Seconds later, a shock wave of nails ripped through the banquet hall, killing 20 diners and wounding more than 130 – the second deadliest suicide attack in a year and a half of fighting.

It was simply horrific. "Come, let me help you get up," one guest, who gave only his first name, Yitzhak, said to a wounded woman in the darkness. "How can you help me?" Yitzhak recalled the woman telling him. "I don't have legs."

Many of the dead were in their 70s and 80s, including a Swedish woman. Only 13 bodies had been identified by Thursday afternoon; five remained unclaimed. Three were so badly mangled that they could not immediately be identified, and relatives were asked for DNA samples, Israel Radio said.

On Thursday morning, hours after the attack, a large pool of blood still colored the tiled floor beneath a shredded ceiling of dangling wires and pipes. The floor crunched with broken wine glasses and plates. Among the debris were shoes, a skull cap, a baby stroller and squares of matzo, the unleavened cracker eaten during Passover. Humid wind from the sea blew curtains that flapped from broken windows in morning light.

Some guests returned to collect belongings.

Israelis, already living anxious lives and habitually looking over their shoulders at cafes and restaurants, feared attacks during Passover, a holiday that commemorates the exodus of the ancient Israelites from slavery in Egypt.

At the Park Hotel in Netanya, an armed security guard was posted at the door as guests arrived for Wednesday evening's Seder. The watchman was on his first day of duty at the hotel.

At 7:15 p.m., diners entered the banquet hall, having paid $90 each for the meal. The bomber slipped in with the arriving guests, and police were puzzled Thursday as to how he got past the guard. Some witnesses said the attacker may have worn a long wig.

History teacher Nechama Donenhirsch, 52, sat with her family among the excited crowd. Outside it was raining. Lightning turned the sky over the sea purple. There was thunder.

"Suddenly, it was hell," Donenhirsch said from a hospital bed. The blast, which witnesses say came in several huge bursts, tore bodies, tossed chairs and knocked out electricity, plunging the hall into an eerie darkness. A wall crumbled and parts of the ceiling fell. For a brief moment it was silent. Then a ringing in the ears. Shouts for help.

Donenhirsch and her family ducked under a table.

"My daughter, 16 years old, held me and said to me to calm me, 'You are alive, I'm alive, don't worry, we are alive,'" she said.

The bomber, 25-year-old Abdel Baset Odeh, was a member of the Islamic militant group Hamas, and he knew his target well; he used to work in hotels in Netanya and other Israeli cities, Palestinian police said.

A gash in the floor marked the spot where he exploded.

"There was the smell of smoke and dust in my mouth and a ringing in my ears," said Donenhirsch, her eyes red-rimmed from crying. The Donenhirsch family had sat just three or four yards from where the bomber stood.

After a few moments, they moved bit by bit, staggering over body parts to get out.

"We saw a little girl about 10, 12 years old. She was dead," said Donenhirsch, hunching over in grief in her hospital bed. "The face of the little girl, so nice, was like surprise – big open eyes, but surely dead. She was so nice, so young."

Yitzhak, 70, remembered asking a waitress to help him read the menu when the explosion went off. "We thought at first it's thunder and lightning," he said.

He told Israel Army Radio that he hurried toward the exit with his wife and found a heap of bodies in the way. One woman was still alive and he tried to help her get up, but she had no legs. "I left her," he said, weeping.