OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 25 May — A security guard foiled what was apparently an attempted bombing on a nightclub in Tel Aviv early yesterday as Israel staged new raids in the Palestinian territories. Media reports said the unnamed guard at the Studio 49 discotheque noticed a suspect car heading for the entrance of the club and opened fire on the driver, causing a huge explosion. The occupant of the car was killed and five bystanders injured.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, claimed the attack in a statement faxed to AFP. The group has defied a demand by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to stop attacking Israelis. The claims prompted Arafat’s party to issue a statement distancing itself from the its radical offshoot, saying “Fatah has no link with the statements published by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.”
Meanwhile, six Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers were wounded in a clash in the West Bank. Palestinian medical sources said fighting broke out after Israeli troops backed by about 10 tanks entered the northern West Bank town of Tulkarm and its refugee camp to arrest wanted militants. Two of the six wounded Palestinians were reported to be in serious condition.
The army said three of its soldiers were wounded at the entrance to the refugee camp, one of them critically. Palestinian witnesses in the camp said they saw wounded soldiers being evacuated by the army. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades also claimed the attack on the soldiers and said it had seized soldiers’ weapons during the attack.
Israeli troops also entered Gaza City early yesterday, destroying three workshops before pulling out. Tanks and jeeps moved more than two kilometers into Palestinian territory, targeting factories in the industrial zone of Zeitoun in the south of Gaza City, Palestinian security sources said. They blew up a metal workshop and a fiberglass factory and a timber yard, witnesses said. No one was killed or injured in the incursion, and the army pulled out some three hours later, security sources said.
Israeli troops also arrested five men during raids in the southern West Bank areas of Bethlehem and Hebron, both sides said. The latest attacks by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades followed the killing of three members of the radical group in the West Bank by Israeli tank fire in a targeted assassination. At their funeral Thursday the Brigades warned “there will be no more red lines” in the fight against Israel.
Israeli public radio reported that CIA Director George Tenet and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs William Burns would arrive in Israel next week. But US Consulate spokeswoman Pat Kabra denied the report, saying it was “very unlikely” they would be coming next week. A European Union official said EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana would come to Israel “very soon” to pursue his Middle East peacemaking efforts.
