Suicide bomber kills 3 in Israel's Eilat resort

EILAT, Israel, Jan 29 (Reuters) A Palestinian suicide bomber killed three people in a bakery in the Red Sea resort of Eilat, one of Israel's most popular holiday spots, in the first such attack in the Jewish state in nine months, police said.

Islamic Jihad, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades -- part of President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction -- and the previously unknown ''Army of Believers'' all claimed responsibility for the bombing.

The attack came four days before the so-called Quartet of Middle East peace negotiators were to meet in Washington as part of a renewed effort to revive Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

Khaled al-Batsh, a senior Islamic Jihad leader, said the attack was ''a natural response to the continued crimes by the Zionist enemy''.

The blast tore through the ''Lechamim'' bakery in a residential neighbourhood far from a strip of beach hotels.

Loaves of bread, still on trays, lay on the blood-stained pavement outside.

''I saw a man with a black coat and a bag. For Eilat, where it is hot, it is strange to see someone walking with a coat. I said to myself, 'Why is this idiot dressed that way?' Seconds later, I heard a huge blast. The building shook,'' Benny Mazgini, a local resident, told Israel Radio.

Eilat, at the northern tip of the Red Sea, is popular with Israeli and foreign tourists and has been spared the violence of a more than six-year-long Palestinian uprising.

Mickey Rosenfeld, a spokesman for the national police, said three people and the bomber were killed.

Body parts were were strewn throughout the bakery, where police initially had said the explosion had been caused by a gas leak.

''We are still trying to determine where the suicide bomber came from and the precise details as to his route of attack,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said.

Eilat, some 350 kilometres south of Jerusalem, is bordered by Egypt and Jordan.

Islamic Jihad is not a party to a Gaza ceasefire agreed in November by Israel and militant groups, and it has demanded the truce also cover the occupied West Bank where Israeli forces frequently mount raids to arrest gunmen.

A Palestinian suicide bomber last struck in Israel on April 17, 2006, killing 11 people outside a restaurant in Tel Aviv in an attack claimed by the Islamic Jihad group.

REUTERS BDP HT1552