Two killed in Tel Aviv suicide bombing

A Palestinian suicide bomb-er killed an 18-month-old girl and an elderly woman when he blew himself up outside a coffee shop last night.

About 30 shoppers were wounded, four seriously, in the attack near a shopping mall in Petah Tikva on the eastern fringe of Tel Aviv. The bomber is believed to have tried to enter a supermarket but was turned away by a guard.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a militia affiliated to Yasser Arafat's Al Fatah, claimed responsibility.

The"Eim Hamoshavot centre is lightly guarded, with a big, open-air car park and children's play areas. A witness, who gave his name as Haim, said: "I was standing near the taxi rank. Then we heard a huge explosion. We are talking about children and babies who were sitting with their parents at the café."

A Police spokesman estimated that the bomb was the equivalent of 10kgs of TNT. It was packed with nails and screws, which scattered in the explosion and added to the injuries. The bomber appeared to be a teenager.

Dore Gold, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, denounced the continuing attacks against Israeli civilians. "This is intolerable and something Israel will have to address," he said.

The Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, said: "We have to do whatever we can to beat these things by military means and by political means."

Political sources said the government was unlikely to launch a second large-scale invasion of the kind that followed the Passover Eve bombing in Netanya at the end of March. The army is expected to persist with raids into Palestinian towns and refugee camps in search of wanted men and arms dumps.

There is little sign Mr Sharon is in any mood to resume negotiations. He has said there is no point if Mr Arafat is Palestinian leader.

Despite the severe blow "Operation Defensive Shield" delivered to the Palestinian military infrastructure, bombers have continued to penetrate the security cordon and hit Israeli cities. Police sappers disarmed a large bomb planted in the north Jerusalem suburb of Ramat Eshkol yesterday. A gardener spotted it and raised the alarm.

In the latest Israeli incursion, armoured and infantry forces returned to Bethlehem yesterday. Jeeps and armoured personnel carriers first surrounded the Church of the Nativity to prevent Palestinian gunmen again seeking refuge there.

"We have learned from last time," Lieutenant-Colonel Doron Mor-Yosef, told foreign correspondents in Manger Square. "I think we have done it better. Maybe this time we should stay until we finish it forever. It's a political decision, but the mission is possible."

An army spokesman said the force arrested 15 wanted men, including a three-man cell blamed for a series of attacks that killed 13 Israelis in Rishon Lezion and Jerusalem.

A handful of Israeli extreme right-wingers tried recently to take the law into their own hands and do the army's job for it. Noam Federman, a leader of the outlawed (but tolerated) Kach movement, was charged in a Jerusalem court yesterday with supplying arms and ammunition to a cell that allegedly planned to detonate a car bomb between a Palestinian girls' school and a hospital above the Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem.

¿ Five Israeli soldiers have been sent to prison for up to five months for looting and vandalising Palestinian property during a Israeli offensive in the West Bank. Another 20 are being investigated on similar charges, the army said.