Terrorists Attack With Iran’s Encouragement

(by Julie Stahl, Oct. 26, 2005, CNSNews.com) Jerusalem – A terror attack in the heart of the Israeli city of Hadera, north of Tel Aviv, on Wednesday afternoon killed at least five (new number) people and wounded more than a dozen others, early reports said.

Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack, which came after Iran’s new president said a new wave of Palestinian attacks would wipe Israel “off the map.”

“There is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will wipe off this stigma (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world,” Iran’s state run media quoted President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying on Wednesday, in an address to students at a conference called “The World without Zionism.”

It is not clear if the explosion in Hadera was the result of a suicide bomber or an explosive device planted in the city’s market.

Earlier this week, Islamic Jihad pledged “unprecedented” revenge for the killing of Louay Sa’adi, a senior Islamic Jihad leader, who died Monday in a shootout in the West Bank during an Israeli army operation to arrest him.

Israeli said Sa’adi was involved in numerous shooting and terror attacks, including the suicide bombing at a nightclub in February in which five Israelis were killed; and another one at a shopping mall in the seaside city of Netanya in July in which five people were killed.

Earlier on Wednesday afternoon, a Kassam rocket launched from the Gaza Strip fell in the Israeli community of Netiv Ha’Asara. That followed earlier rocket fire at the southern Israeli city of Sderot. (More to come.)

Reprinted here with permission from CNSNews.com.  To follow this story, go to www.cnsnews.com.