TEL AVIV — As the Israeli government deployed thousands of soldiers and police to protect Jerusalem, a suicide bomber turned on Tel Aviv on Monday afternoon, blowing himself up in a crowded crosswalk by the city's busiest shopping center. The blast killed 12 other people and wounded 109.
The bombing was the fourth in Israel in just over a week, bringing the nine-day death toll to at least 60 in a severe blow to the peace process. It deepened Prime Minister Shimon Peres' political crisis and pushed his government into a war against Islamic extremists.
The explosion threw the country into a panic as Israelis realized that they were in the middle of a terrorist offensive unlike any they had experienced in the decades-old Palestinian-Israeli conflict. On Sunday, a suicide bomber killed himself and 18 other people on a bus in downtown Jerusalem, a week to the day after two previous bombings in Jerusalem and the city of Ashkelon.
"The message is that there is a terrorist campaign and not single attacks," said Ehud Yaari, Arab affairs analyst for Israeli television. "This Hamas group has the infrastructure to carry out attacks whenever it sees fit to do so."
The Islamic extremist group Hamas claimed responsibility for Monday's blast in anonymous telephone calls to Israeli radio, as it did in the previous three bombings. One caller identified the Tel Aviv bomber as 24-year-old Saleh Abdel Rahim of Ramallah, a West Bank city.
Another caller said the attack was a joint operation with the militant group Islamic Jihad, and claimed it was a response to Peres' declaration of war against the fundamentalists Sunday night. The caller warned the Israeli government not to make any other "foolish" decisions or Hamas would strike again.
Tel Aviv Police Chief Gabi Last said the bomber was on foot when he blew himself up about 4 p.m. in a downtown teeming with shoppers and young people dressed in festive costumes for the Jewish holiday of Purim. At least three teenagers were among the dead.
The blast, involving about 25 to 30 pounds of TNT packed with nails, left the city center looking like a war zone of mangled bodies, charred automobiles and blown-out store windows. Police poured into the area around Dizengoff and King George streets with dogs to sniff for any more bombs, while emergency crews evacuated dazed and bloodied survivors and cleared out the dead. Ultra-Orthodox Jews cleaned up body pieces for burial.
Police and city officials said they had information that made them fear an attack in Tel Aviv and called off scheduled Purim street celebrations. They said increased security in the area where many youths nonetheless gathered may have prevented the bomber from entering the busy Dizengoff Street shopping center, where an indoor blast most likely would have caused even more casualties.
In a scene repeated several times in the last week, Peres visited the bomb site amid heavy security to face angry calls for his resignation from hundreds of protesters, several of whom invoked the chilling chant of "Yigal Amir."
Amir is the Jewish law student who is on trial for assassinating Peres' predecessor, Yitzhak Rabin, just down the street in Tel Aviv on Nov. 4. Amir killed Rabin because he opposes Israel's peace agreement with the Palestinians.
Dizengoff Street was the site of one of Hamas' first suicide bus bombings in protest against the 1993 peace accord between Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Twenty-two people were killed in that 1994 blast.
After Monday's explosion, Peres held an emergency Cabinet meeting at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv and announced that he was establishing a joint-forces command to fight the terrorists. He put it under the authority of Gen. Ami Ayalon, the new chief of Israel's General Security Service, which is also known as Shin Bet.
"We will go to any corner where this perverse terror has taken root," Peres said after the meeting. "Israel can be confident that we are recruiting every resource we possibly can. I cannot, unfortunately, promise that from now on everything will proceed smoothly. That would be irresponsible on my part. But I can tell you that we shall overcome this."
Peres, who is also defense minister, declined to comment on specific measures the government might take against Hamas, but he reportedly was considering deportations of Palestinians from Israeli-controlled territory and military raids against Hamas targets in areas under Palestinian rule.
In general terms, Peres said, "this is a war in defense of the state of Israel. We are allowed, even obligated, to take such actions."
Palestinian security officials warned that they would view an Israeli military raid as a violation of the peace agreement and an attack against Palestinian sovereignty.
President Clinton, who had a long talk with Peres after the bombing, denounced the wave of attacks and appeared to offer Israel support for a military response.
