The bloody tit-for-tat violence in the Middle East deepened yesterday. Israeli troops shot dead four Palestinians associated with Mr Yasser Arafat's Fatah party in the Gaza Strip, and a powerful car bomb explosion killed two Israelis and injured at least 65, only hours later in the city of Hadera, north of Tel Aviv.
Israeli troops sprayed bullets into two cars near a military checkpoint in southern Gaza yesterday morning, after tracking a vehicle carrying Mr Jamal Abdel Razek, a senior Fatah member, and three of his colleagues.
Israeli officials insisted that Mr Razek tried to run the roadblock, and that he was a member of the Tanzim militia, which has been responsible for most of the shooting attacks on Israeli targets during the eight-week old Palestinian uprising.
Mr Razek, military officials insisted, had been personally involved in shooting and bomb attacks in the Gaza Strip. Senior Cabinet Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said Israel had adopted a new policy of using more pinpoint strikes, and he issued a chilling warning, saying the army would "lay its hands on all those who carry out attacks - one by one."
Incensed Palestinian officials insisted that the four were civilians who had been shot without provocation and said that a woman, travelling in a second car, had also been killed in the hail of bullets. The Palestinians said Israeli soldiers fired from machine guns mounted on tanks. Mr Mohammed Dahlan, a Palestinian security chief in Gaza, charged Israel with carrying out a "barbaric assassination."
Palestinian leaders promised the attack would lead to further escalation. It was not long in coming. At 5.20 p.m. a huge car bomb was detonated next to a crowded bus during rush hour in downtown Hadera. The explosion tore through the bus, spraying the surrounding area with charred debris and sending a pall of black smoke over the city.
Mr Mahmoud A-Zahar, a Hamas official in Gaza, said the attack was in response to Israel's killing of the four Fatah members, but he stopped short of any claim of responsibility. "We see this as an essential response to the Israeli aggression," he said.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, immediately blamed the Palestinian Authority for the attack, pointing to Mr Arafat's decision to release Islamic militants from his jails during the early days of the conflict. Mr Barak vowed that Israel would settle accounts with those behind the bombing.
The latest escalation, which began with a roadside bomb attack on a Jewish settler schoolbus in Gaza on Monday and Israel's retaliatory bombardment of Palestinian security targets in the Strip hours later, has caused growing concern that the whole region could be lurching toward a dangerous military conflagration.
A worrying sign of the spiralling tension was Egypt's decision on Tuesday to recall its ambassador to Israel in response to Israel's bombing in Gaza. "There is a genuine concern that the violence could spin out of control,' said the US Secretary of Defence, Mr William Cohen, who met Mr Barak in Jerusalem yesterday in what appeared to be a vain attempt to head off further escalation.
The two also discussed a US-appointed fact-finding commission, headed by Northern Ireland peace broker, Senator George Mitchell, which is to investigate the hostilities, and which the Americans believe could ultimately help reduce the violence.