An orgy of violence enveloped Israel yesterday, including two suicide bombings and a fatal drive-by shooting. Five Israelis were killed, as were the two suicide bombers; over 100 more were injured. Another Palestinian was killed, Israeli officials said, when he was spotted by troops as he planted a bomb in Gaza.
But amid all the anguish and bloodshed the single most worrying development for Israel was the indication that one of the suicide bombers was himself an Israeli, a Muslim from a village in the north of Israel, named as Mohamed Shakar Habishi, who had strong ties to the extremist Hamas move ment.
Eyewitnesses said it was Mr Habishi who blew himself up at Nahariya railway station, near Israel's northern border, killing three Israelis, an elderly couple and a soldier. More than 90 people were injured, several of them children, and at least three of the injured came from Mr Habishi's village.
As ever, aides to the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, placed blame for the blast on Mr Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority and noted that the Palestinians had been asked to arrest Mr Habishi, by name, when he was known to be in the West Bank city of Jenin a few days ago.
The Palestinian Authority condemned both the violence in Israel yesterday and the Israeli response, which saw missile attacks on installations of the Palestinian Authority and of the pro-Arafat Tanzim militia in five West Bank cities, including Ramallah and Nablus.
Three hours before the Nahariya bombing, two Israelis were killed by a Palestinian gunman on a main road just inside the border with Jordan. A minibus carrying teachers to schools in the string of settlements along the border was ambushed; the driver and a 24-year-old kindergarten teacher were killed. Islamic Jihad militants issued a claim of responsibility.
Less than an hour after the Nahariya blast, a second suicide bomber detonated explosives in his car alongside a bus at the Beit Lid junction in central Israel, injuring 11 people.
Deaglan de Breadun reports from Brussels: The need for the resumption of political dialogue and a ceasefire sustained by confidence building measures are the key themes of the visit to the Middle East by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, which begins this morning. It includes meetings with political leaders in Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Syria and Lebanon.
Mr Cowen exchanged views on the Middle East with his European counterparts during an informal weekend meeting of EU foreign ministers at Genval, outside the Belgian capital. He is due to meet President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in Cairo today. Tonight he will fly to Tel Aviv for a dinner with the Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr Shimon Peres.
Speaking in Brussels before his departure, Mr Cowen emphasised the need to implement the report of the international committee chaired by Senator George Mitchell, which called for a ceasefire, a halt to the building of settlements by the Israelis and the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian security co-operation.