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Photo: AFP
Injured being carried away from scene of terror attack
Photo: AFP

Surprise party ends in horror

Eyewitnesses give accounts of Friday night’s suicide terror attack in Tel Aviv; some say Sharon leading country toward disaster

TEL AVIV - “The terror will never go away. Sharon is going to cause a Middle Eastern Tsunami” - The surprise party organized by Revital Gravesky of Jerusalem for her husband Yaron’s 30th birthday at Tel Aviv’s Stage nightclub ended in horror, as dozens of their friends were waiting for them when the suicide bomber blew himself up at the club’s entrance.

 

The couple arrived at the scene a few minutes after the blast.

 

“I feel very bad,” Yaron Gravesky said upon his arrival at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv in search of his friends. “Eight of our friends are still unaccounted for; I don’t know what happened to them.”

 

Eran Zorano, 23, a security at the nearby Alenby 2 club, said that when he arrived at the Stage club to pick something up, he saw a white Subaru car making its way in his direction.

 

“Four or five people were sitting inside (the car). Then they shouted at their friend ‘come here, come here’ (in Arabic). The terrorist got out of the car. He looked at me and blew up. He stood a meter-and-a-half (5 feet) away from me. Suddenly everything was destroyed and it became black,” he said.

 

Storm after the calm

 

Meirav Ayash, a 20-year-old soldier who was the first to report the attack to the Magen David Adom medical units, said she and her boyfriend Tzahi drove to the beachfront for fruit shakes.

 

“Suddenly we heard an enormous blast, followed by the sound of car alarms and a lot of smoke,” she said. “I saw 15, maybe 17 people lying on the ground bleeding.”

 

Beachfront restaurant owner Hamis Abulafya, who also owns the Stage club premises, told Ynet “this is a very harsh and sad situation. After a period of calm, reality appears and gives us a ringing slap in the face.”

 

Abulafya said he calls on Palestinian Authority leader to “pull up his sleeves and reach those people who are threatening his legitimate government.”

 

“If he won’t do this, I am afraid the day will come when he will become a victim of those who are threatening to make our lives miserable,” he said.

 

Some of those who arrived at the scene expressed indignation and doubt regarding the peace process.

 

Avigdor Ben-Avraham, who arrived at the scene following the attack said, “Ever since the days of Moses we have had problems with them.”

 

“The terror will never go away. Sharon is going to cause a Tsunami,” he said. “He (Sharon) gives the Arabs presents; it will be a Middle Eastern Tsunami, a Sodom and Gomorrah war, an earthquake.”

 

-Moran Zelikovich, Ofer Mayer, and Miri Chason contributed to this article.

 


פרסום ראשון: 02.26.05, 09:21
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