Witnesses at the site of the Monday suicide bombing in Eilat recounted scenes of blood-stained pavements, smoke and scattered body parts.

"We were sitting and drinking coffee some five meters from the site," said a local resident. "Suddenly we heard a large explosion and I immediately thought that it was a suicide bomber.

"When we went outside we saw that the place had been destroyed and there were body parts everywhere. The blast was in a popular bakery where people came to drink coffee and buy baguettes."

	Advertisement

The blast tore through the "Lechamim" bakery in a residential neighborhood, far from the strip of beach-front hotels.

The attack caused television stations to break into programming with live coverage from the scene. The building was shown in tatters, the front windows blown into the street. Witnesses said body parts were strewn throughout the bakery.

Benny Mazgini, 45, said he was in an apartment across the street from the bakery when the building shook from the force of the blast.

When he ran outside, Mazgini said, he saw body parts scattered on the sidewalk.

"It was awful - there was smoke, pieces of flesh all over the place," he said.

He told Israel Radio that he 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."

Tourism fears

Officials of the Eilat hotel and tourism industry fear that the Monday terror attack, the first suicide bombing in the resort city, could sap efforts to restore foreign tourism, already hit hard by cancellations in the aftermath of the Lebanon war last year.

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.

Shabi Shay, head of the Eilat Hotels Association, noted that the local tourist industry "finished the year 2006 extraordinarily well. Eilat saw nearly 50 percent of all the hotel stays in the entire country."

But the war had a telling effect on bookings for this year, he said. "The Lebanon war last year caused the cancellation of most of the charter flights to the city. As a result of that, the figures for foreign tourism were already low."

Shay said the bombing was unlikely to have an immediate impact, because January is traditionally a month of low occupancy.

However, he said, "We are working on the coming season, and there are many programs that are due to be revived, and this is our great apprehension, that foreign wholesalers may decide on the basis of what's happened, to reconsider their plans."

Shay said he hoped the effect of the bombing would be short-lived.

Asked what she would tell foreigners planning an Eilat vacation, Miri Eisin, a spokeswoman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said: "In 2006, we prevented many suicide attacks, and we will continue to do so. It's safe to come to Israel, as it was in the past."

Related articles: