Israeli government sources said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon tempered a military response to the back-to-back blasts in a Tel Aviv foreign workers' neighborhood, in a bid to avoid upsetting US efforts to win Arab support for possible war on Iraq.

The Tel Aviv bombings Sunday came just three weeks before a general election at which security concerns will be paramount in the minds of many Israeli voters, and could smooth right-winger Sharon's bid to regain power.

Hours after the blasts, at least 14 missiles streaked into targets in Gaza City that included two metal foundries which the Israeli army alleged were used to make weapons for Palestinians in a 27-month-old uprising.

Five people suffered light shrapnel injuries, Palestinian officials said of the air raid that occurred late Sunday night when streets were largely empty.

Meeting in emergency session after one of the most serious attacks in Tel Aviv since the revolt for statehood began, Sharon's security cabinet decided to bar Palestinians from attending two key meetings this month, government sources said.

They said Israel would stop top Palestinian officials from traveling to a Jan. 14 conference in London sponsored by the British government to discuss Middle East peace and Palestinian Authority reforms demanded by the United States.

Israel would also prevent the Palestinian Central Council from meeting for the first time in two years on Jan. 9 to ratify a Palestinian constitution, including a clause establishing the post of prime minister.

The meeting of one of the Palestine Liberation Organization's top bodies was to have been held in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Israeli forces reoccupied Palestinian cities after suicide bombings in June.

GROUP LINKED TO ARAFAT'S FATAH CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY

The militant al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, an armed offshoot of Arafat's Fatah faction, claimed responsibility for the attacks.

It named the bombers as Boraq Abdel Rahman Halfa and Saber al-Nouri from the West Bank city of Nablus and said they struck Tel Aviv in retaliation for demolitions of Palestinian homes.

Fatah's main political body later issued a statement saying the names of the two men were not in its "membership files" and that it condemned acts such as the Tel Aviv bombing. The Palestinian Authority denounced it as a "terrorist" attack.

The blasts, two minutes apart, tore through an area near the old bus station and a crowded mall nearby, leaving bodies strewn about, shops in ruins and people fleeing in panic from an area frequented by foreign workers in Israel's biggest city.

It was the first such attack in Israel for six weeks.

"Happy New Year" read the sign outside Tel Aviv's Station Cafe, where overturned tables, smashed beer bottles and pieces of flesh littered the sidewalk.

"People collapsed right here in agony. It was catastrophic," said Gabi, 31, owner of a bar targeted in the attack.

John Adu, 45, from Ghana, cleans houses for a living in Tel Aviv. He was knocked to the ground by the first blast and then ran in the wrong direction as the second bomb exploded and sent him sprawling.

"I prayed not to die and thought maybe God would save me because I was in the Holy Land," Adu said. Though his trousers were left smeared with blood when one of the wounded fell on top of him, he escaped unscathed.

President Bush denounced the Tel Aviv attack. "He condemns this in the strongest possible terms," spokeswoman Claire Buchan said. "There are those who want to derail the peace process. But the president will not be deterred."

In what the Israeli army called a continuation of its battle against terrorism, soldiers detained an Islamic Jihad militant outside the southern Gaza refugee camp of Rafah and destroyed his house. Palestinians said two people were wounded.

Before the attack, the death toll of those killed since the Palestinian uprising for statehood started in September 2000, was at least 1,760 Palestinians and 676 Israelis.

(China Daily January 6, 2002)