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Read a particularly eerie account of the moments preceding yesterday's suicide bomber attack in Netanya, Israel. A well-dressed Arab man walking into a crowded shopping mall was noticed by a man and his daughter because of the cold look in his eyes. As he approached, they realized that something looked out of place with him. He was quite thin, but his long overcoat looked extremely bulky. After he passed them, they noticed a belt holding explosives. "Daddy, that man is a terrorist," the daughter whispered to her father. He agreed and immediately phoned the police on his mobile phone. Father and daughter stayed frozen in their tracks, waiting to see what would happen next. After the explosion, the father said that if he had had a gun with him, he would have shot the man in the back.
A security guard looked up from the person he was talking to and made eye contact with the man in the overcoat as he passed by them on his way out of the mall. The guard thought something looked odd about him too, but didn't think about it too much after the man left the building. He noticed him come back in a few minutes later, look around, and without any warning, he disappeared into flames and smoke with a huge explosion. The guard would later say from his hospital bed that he didn't notice the man do anything - he just exploded into a ball of flames right before his eyes.
Israeli F-16 fighter jets made several attacks later the same day in retaliation. They leveled Palestinian security headquarters and coast-guard bases with rocket fire, using those jets in direct action against Palestine for the first time since the Six-Day War in 1967. A United Nations envoy to the Middle East was quoted as saying that the situation is on the verge of escalating to uncontrollable levels.
The bomber was a 21-year-old grocery clerk. After attending dawn prayers, he brought his mother a bag of sweets before leaving for work for the day. But he didn't go to work; he went instead to the mall in question and blew himself up, taking with him 6 people and injuring over 100 others.
He was only 21 years old. How could a 21-year-old man make a decision like that? The militant group Hamas later claimed responsibility for the action.
A security guard looked up from the person he was talking to and made eye contact with the man in the overcoat as he passed by them on his way out of the mall. The guard thought something looked odd about him too, but didn't think about it too much after the man left the building. He noticed him come back in a few minutes later, look around, and without any warning, he disappeared into flames and smoke with a huge explosion. The guard would later say from his hospital bed that he didn't notice the man do anything - he just exploded into a ball of flames right before his eyes.
Israeli F-16 fighter jets made several attacks later the same day in retaliation. They leveled Palestinian security headquarters and coast-guard bases with rocket fire, using those jets in direct action against Palestine for the first time since the Six-Day War in 1967. A United Nations envoy to the Middle East was quoted as saying that the situation is on the verge of escalating to uncontrollable levels.
The bomber was a 21-year-old grocery clerk. After attending dawn prayers, he brought his mother a bag of sweets before leaving for work for the day. But he didn't go to work; he went instead to the mall in question and blew himself up, taking with him 6 people and injuring over 100 others.
He was only 21 years old. How could a 21-year-old man make a decision like that? The militant group Hamas later claimed responsibility for the action.