A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up in central Jerusalem early Wednesday morning, lightly injuring five people, the Jerusalem police said.
The bombing attack took place shortly after 7:30 a.m. (0530 GMT)on King David Street in the Mamila neighborhood in Jerusalem. The suicide bomber had killed himself.
Jerusalem Police chief Micky Levy said that only five people were lightly injured from shrapnel because there were yet not many people on the streets in the early cold and rainy winter morning.
After the attack, police and first aid workers rushed to the bomb site near the Hilton Hotel, which lies very close to Jerusalem's Old City and the 1967 Green Line Separating East from West Jerusalem.
There is still a large police presence at the scene and the police has closed off the area, eyewitnesses said.
The blast came a day after Israel launched a series of massive air strikes against Palestinian targets to retaliate the large-scale suicide bombing attacks in central Jerusalem and the northern city of Haifa over the weekend, which left 25 people dead and nearly 200 people injured. The wave of attacks against Israel was the worst in six years.
The Islamic Resistance Movement of Hamas had claimed responsibility for the fatal attacks to "express the frustration of the Palestinian people" over Israeli occupation.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accused Palestinian National Authority (PNA) Chairman Yasser Arafat of being responsible for the attacks. In a late-night meeting on Monday, the Israeli cabinet voted to declare the PNA as a "terror-supporting entity."
Israel said the air strikes were intended to hit the Palestinian apparatus planning and supporting "terrorist activities" against Israel and to force the PNA to take actions against "terrorism."
Arafat, however, said the Israeli air strikes showed that Sharon does not want to start the peace negotiations with him. The Palestinian leader said he still committed to cracking down on radical militants but only a peace agreement can bring "a hundred percent results."
(Xinhua News Agency December 5, 2001)
