Israelis wounded and shaken by a suicide bomb attack on a resort hotel in Kenya arrived home on an Israeli air force jet today to tearful reunions on the runway with family and friends.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed Israel would hunt down those responsible for crashing a bomb-laden vehicle into the Paradise Hotel in the coastal resort of Mombasa, killing three Israelis and nine Kenyans and wounding about 75 people.
"Our long arm will catch the attackers and those who dispatch them," Mr Sharon said in a solemn voice after a landslide win over Foreign Minister Mr Benjamin Netanyahu in a pre-election leadership primary conducted by his Likud party.
Official returns by the right-wing Likud gave Mr Sharon 55.8 per cent of the vote to Mr Netanyahu's 40 per cent.
"The Kenya attacks mark an escalation of international terrorism by firing missiles at a civilian plane," Mr Netanyahu told foreign ambassadors in Israel today, according to a Foreign Ministry statement.
"This escalation stems from the safe haven and support afforded terrorist groups by terror-supporting nations." Mr Sharon echoed a pledge Israel made after the killing of 11 of its athletes taken hostage by Palestinian gunmen at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Israel eventually used its Mossad spy agency to trace and kill those it held responsible for the Munich attack.
Mossad could find the going tough. With Israeli intelligence experts blaming Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network for yesterday's attacks, the spy agency will have to track an enemy with many faces and cells in numerous countries.
"They will have to work hard - it won't be easy - but they definitely can do it," Mr Yossi Melman, an Israeli expert on the Mossad, told reporters.