A Palestinian suicide bomber has killed seven people in Jerusalem and Israeli troops have killed an eighteen year old Palestinian in Gaza.
Fears grew for the viability of the so-called road map for peace when the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon postponed his planned trip to Washington for discussions with President George W. Bush.
Sharon's office did not say when the prime minister wouldreschedule his trip.
In Jerusalem, a second suicide attacker detonated his explosives belt at a roadblock near the first explosion killing himself, bringing the overall toll to nine dead in a fresh spasm of bloodshed hours after the highest-level Israeli-Palestinian talks for more than two years.
The talks, which were inconclusive, had already been marred by a Palestinian suicide attack in the divided West Bank city of Hebron on Saturday night that killed two Jewish settlers.
Palestinian militant groups waging a 31-month-long revolt against Israel have sworn to defy Palestinian Premier Mahmoud Abbas and scuttle the "road map" peace plan unfurled by Bush and partners of the U.S. in a mediating Quartet two weeks ago.
The violence was likely to add ammunition to Sharon's insistence that the new reform-minded Palestinian government subdue militant groups first before Israel relaxes its military grip on territory Palestinians seek for a state.
Sharon had planned to see Bush at the White House on Tuesday to raise his objections to the "road map", which stipulates mutual confidence-building steps to bring Palestinian statehood in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by 2005.
Seven people were killed and about 20 wounded when a Palestinian militant disguised as a religious Jew stepped aboard a commuter bus in Jerusalem's French Hill district and promptly blew himself up, police chief Mickey Levy said.
"I was in the bus going to work when there was a blast. When I looked up, there was a woman in front of me dead, and a woman to my right dead. I saw a severed head on the floor. I only suffered bruises," passenger Yizhak Shklar told Israel radio.
Elsewhere this morning, Israeli forces shot dead an 18-year-old Palestinian man in the Gaza refugee camp of Khan Younis and wounded three in clashes with stone-throwers in the West Bank city of Nablus.
"The Prime Minister has postponed his trip to the United States and his meeting with U.S. President George Bush in light of the wave of terrorism," Sharon's office said in a statement.
There was no immediate reaction from Washington.
Sharon planned a cabinet meeting at 6 p.m. (4 p.m. British time) to decide a possible response to the attacks, for which aides placed ultimate blame on Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
"Some decisions have to be made (to) send clear messages to Arafat and his friends who continue to instigate and try to spoil this delicate effort to put peace back on track," Sharon spokesman Raanan Gissin told journalists.
Washington is boycotting Arafat as an alleged obstacle to peace, a charge he denies. He named Abbas premier under mediators' pressure to dilute his power and halt violence. But Arafat remains the predominant Palestinian political figure.
Palestinian Information Minister Nabil Amr condemned the suicide strikes. "(We) are serious about taking measures to stop these kinds of operations to create the appropriate atmosphere for resuming the political process," he said.
Palestinian leaders have endorsed the road map. Sharon has not. His right-wing coalition opposes granting Palestinians full sovereignty on land Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war.
Mahmoud Zahar, a senior figure in the Islamic militant group Hamas, told Reuters: "These (suicide attacks) reflect the people's view that we should not waste our time hoping America or Israel will just give us our land."