At least 17 killed in Tel Aviv suicide bomb attack

At least 17 people were killed and scores injured last night after a huge bomb went off in Tel Aviv, the heartland of secular Israel, at the height of an early summer weekend.

Israeli media reports said the device, detonated by a suicide bomber, went off close to a disco crowded with young people relaxing at the start of the Jewish Sabbath.

It was the most deadly bombing against Israelis since the start of the Palestinian uprising eight months ago, in which about 550 people have lost their lives.

The bombing comes a fortnight after a Hamas suicide bomb in Netanya killed five Israelis, which led Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to retaliate using F-16 war planes to bomb targets in the West Bank, killing 11.

As ambulances streamed to the scene, Charles Malcha, chief of the Tel Aviv Fire Brigade, said there were 17 dead, and that the security services were evacuating the wounded, expected to number more than 70.

The head of the Yarkon police division in Tel Aviv, Uri Bar-Lev, confirmed that at least 17 people had been killed, including the suicide bomber.

According to eye-witness accounts, the bomber blew himself up next to a queue of people outside the Pascha nightclub, close to the city's dolphinarium. One eye witness said: "I entered a nightclub and suddenly there was a flash and a boom that threw me backward."

Thirty ambulances raced to the scene of the blast.

There will now be intensified pressure on Yasser Arafat to bring Palestinian militants into line, although it is clear they are not within his control.

- INDEPENDENT