Sharon blames Arafat for violence

The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has again accused the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat of supporting the continuing wave of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

His comments came after two bomb attacks in Jerusalem left one man dead and injured about thirty other people.

The dead man is suspected to have caused one of the explosions, close to an Israeli bus in the north of the city. In the other attack, a few hours earlier, a car bomb exploded near an Israeli shopping centre. Tension is also running high in the West Bank city of Hebron and there reports that an eleven-year-old Palestinian boy has been shot dead by Israeli security forces near the city.

There have been clashes between Palestinian gunmen and the Israeli military since a Jewish child was shot dead on Monday.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service