NAHARIYA, Israel (Islamweb & News Agencies - A Palestinian Resistance bombing, car bomb explosions at a major Israeli intersection and a West Bank shooting killed seven people Sunday in a thunderous concerted Palestinian Resistance response to recent attacks by Israeli assassination squads against their leaders.
Deadly events unfolded by the hour in retaliation to an helicopter gunship missile strike on two empty offices of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction in and around the West Bank city of Ramallah.
An Israeli teacher and a driver were killed when Palestinian Resistance ambushed a van ferrying teachers to a school in an internationally illegal Jewish settlement in the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank
Some two hours later, a Resistance bomber killed himself and three other people at a train station in the northern Israeli city of Nahariya. Some 35 people were wounded.
The station was crowded with occupation soldiers returning from weekend leave.
Three hours after the Nahariya blast, two car bombs exploded next to an empty Israeli bus at the busy Beit Lid junction, near the central city of Netanya. One person, who police said was apparently a bomber, was killed. The bus went up in flames.
Dozens of occupation soldiers gather at Beit Lid on Sundays to await transportation back to their bases in the West Bank and elsewhere. In 1995, 21 people were killed at the intersection when two Palestinian Resistance bombers blew themselves up.
Overnight in the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian Resistance and wounded another during an attempt to slip into Israel.
SHARON SPOKESMAN ACCUSES ARAFAT
A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accused Yasser Arafat of instigating the attacks when preparations were under way for talks between the Palestinian leader and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
``This shows that while Arafat is talking about conducting negotiations and returning to the peace process...he's providing the support and the instigation for continuous terrorist activity,'' the spokesman, Raanan Gissin, told Reuters.
``What should they talk about? The man doesn't want to talk -- he wants to shoot,'' Gissin said of Arafat, adding that Israel would draw ``the proper conclusions.''
Peres said Friday he and Arafat planned to meet this week and hold two follow-up sessions to try to agree a truce in nearly a year of fighting since a Palestinian uprising erupted last September after peace talks stalled.
Arafat's adviser, Nabil Abu Rdainah, said the Palestinians would give their final response on holding talks with Peres after an Arab foreign ministers' meeting in Cairo Sunday.
Some 558 Palestinians and 163 Israelis have been killed in the bloodletting.
A decision on whether to go ahead with the Peres-Arafat meeting could be taken at a meeting later Sunday of Sharon's security cabinet.
RESISTANCE CLAIM REPONSIBILITY
The Izz el-Deen al-Qassam brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas, claimed responsibility for the Nahariya bombing, according to al-Jazeera satellite television, which broadcasts from Qatar.
``We do not trust any negotiations. The only option for our people is resistance,'' Ismail Abu Shanab, a senior Hamas official, told al-Manar, the television station of the Hizbollah organization in Lebanon, by telephone from Gaza.
Islamic Jihad said its gunmen attacked the van in the Jordan Valley. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the Beit Lid blasts.
The Nahariya attack was the second suicide bombing against Israelis in less than a week. Tuesday, a Palestinian disguised as an Orthodox Jew blew himself up in Jerusalem, wounding 15 people.
The coastal city of Nahariya is on Israel's border with Lebanon and was a target of Hizbollah rocket attacks before Israel's military withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000.
``I heard a huge boom, and as a resident of Nahariya, I can tell you that Katyushas have fallen here, but never has there been such a loud explosion,'' a witness told Israel Radio.
A body lay crumpled outside shattered shops lining the bloodstained train platform. A severed finger was blown under the tire of car on the other side of the tracks.
Police said the bomb was packed with nails for more deadly effect.
``People ran in every direction, frightened and hysterial,'' a witness told Army Radio from her hospital bed.