Tel Aviv Bomb Kills One, Israel Assassinates 4 Palestinians

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM - A few hours after Israel assassinated four Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, an Israeli woman was killed and 20 people injured early on Saturday, July 11, as a bomb hit a bust stop in Tel Aviv.

Israeli emergency services rushed to the scene of the blast near a long-distance bus stop in the Israeli capital at around 7:00a.m. (0400 GMT) and sped the badly injured to hospital, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

A woman was declared dead on arrival at hospital, Israeli police and medical sources said.

"One woman was killed and we have around 20 people injured," a spokesman for Tel Aviv police told AFP.

Israeli police chief Yossi Setbon said that a powerful device had been concealed in shrubbery.

"It was caused by a charge which had been placed close to a bus stop, in the middle of bushes," he told reporters at the scene of the explosion.

"A bus and nearby buildings were damaged by the explosion."

A motorist who alerted police to the explosion said one of the casualties was a female soldier.

"I heard this loud explosion and then a cloud of smoke rose on my left," he told the Israeli public radio.

"There was a young woman soldier lying on the pavement...She murmured something and then lost consciousness."

Police and firefighters, using sniffer dogs, were searching the area for any other bombs.

Fatah Claims Attack

Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the armed wing of Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the attack in a telephone call to AFP.

An anonymous spokesman for the group said it was carried out to avenge "crimes committed by Israeli occupation forces" in the West Bank town of Nablus and in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli occupation troops, backed by helicopters and armored bulldozers, killed at least 8 Palestinians, including the local commander of the Hamas resistance group, and injured many others in two separate incursions in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, July 8.

On July 3, four Palestinians were killed and several others injured in a deadly Israeli raid into the Gaza Strip, while Israeli bulldozers went on reducing Palestinian homes to rubble in the southern city of Rafah .

The Israeli incursions into Rafah in May claimed the lives of up to 62 Palestinians, flattened 155 homes and drove some 2000 residents homeless.

The Tel Aviv blast is the first such attack by Palestinians inside Israel for nearly four months.

The last attack was on March 14 when 10 Israelis as well as two Palestinian bombers were killed in the southern port of Ashdod .

4 Palestinians Killed

Meanwhile, three Palestinian resistance activists from Saladin Brigades, the armed wing of the Popular Resistance Committees, were killed in the Gaza Strip late on Saturday, July 10, when an Israeli tank shelled a civilian car traveling along the coastal road.

A fourth activist from Hamas' armed wing Ezzudin Al-Qassam Brigades was caught in the explosion as he was traveling by on his motorcycle, Palestinian sources said.

Palestinian security officials initially said the attack was carried out by an Israeli helicopter, but later said the car was hit by an Israeli tank shell.

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