Tel Aviv suicide bomb kills three after helicopter strike on Gaza

There was no Christmas truce in the Holy Land yesterday. A Palestinian suicide bomber killed at least three Israelis and wounded 15 at a crowded Tel-Aviv bus stop yesterday afternoon, just hours after an Israeli helicopter strike in Gaza City killed a local Islamic Jihad commander and four others. At least 12 other Gaza Palestinians were wounded, some seriously.

Four of the Tel-Aviv wounded were reported to be in serious condition. According to early reports, two of the dead were women. All of the casualties were believed to be in their 20s. The army immediately clamped a total closure on the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

It was the first such bombing inside Israel for almost three months, though the security services reported receiving many warnings and blocked dozens in that period. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was reported to have claimed responsibility. Police said that the bomber arrived on foot at a major junction near a hospital on a by-pass road.

Miqled Hamid, 40, had escaped an assassination attempt six months ago. But in Gaza yesterday, the commander of Islamic Jihad's armed wing and three others travelling in his car were killed, as was a passer-by in the Sheikh Radwan district, by the Israeli army. All the wounded were believed to be civilians. The assassination was the first of its kind since October, when 14 Palestinians were killed in a series of attacks in the Nusseirat refugee camp in Gaza. Israel halted them after Hamas was reported to have taken a strategic decision to stop suicide bombings inside Israel.

Khaled Albatsh, an Islamic Jihad spokesman, said yesterday's air strike was a "dirty message" to Egyptian and other Arab mediators trying to broker a ceasefire. "It is a crime which is added to the crimes Israel has committed against our people elsewhere," he added.

Earlier yesterday, Israeli sentries shot dead a Palestinian they spotted crawling towards the fence of the Ganei Tal Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip. He was found to be wearing an explosives belt. Palestinian sources said that he was an Islamic Jihad activist. In Nablus, in the West Bank, a Hamas fighter died when the car bomb he was driving blew up prematurely.

On Tuesday, Israeli troops killed nine Palestinians in gun battles in the Rafah refugee camp on the border between Gaza and Egypt. The army later blew up a deep 800-metre tunnel it said was used to smuggle weapons and wanted men across the border.

The bloodshed continued even as the Latin Patriarch, Michel Sabbah, called for an end to evil in the Holy Land.

"The occupation is an evil that should be ended. Carnage against innocents too is an evil that should be stopped," he said at the Roman Catholic midnight mass in Bethlehem where, despite an easing of Israeli travel restrictions, only 4,000 pilgrims were at Manger Square and St Catherine's Church, next to Jesus' birthplace. Only a few dozen came from abroad, the rest were local Christians. Before the intifada broke out in September 2000, there would have been at least 15,000.

At midnight mass, a chair was left empty in the front row for Yasser Arafat, barred by Israel from travelling to Bethlehem. It was draped with the Palestinian leader's signature black and white keffiyeh, and an invitation to the service.