Palestinian Suicide Bomber Kills 3 in Israeli Resort City

Mickey Rosenfeld, an Israeli police spokesman, said Siksik likely slipped across the Gaza border and into Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. Israel has complained frequently about Palestinian arms smuggling along the frontier since its soldiers left the border area in November 2005.

Rosenfeld said Siksik then likely entered Israel from the Sinai, a vast, lightly populated desert along Israel's southern border. Israeli government officials said investigators were still gathering evidence of his movements.

Witness accounts in the Israeli media said Siksik may have received a ride into Eilat from a resident, who grew suspicious and called the police after dropping him off. Siksik may have triggered the bomb before he had originally planned after hearing police cars approach the bakery, witnesses said.

The victims were identified as Emil Almaliakh, 23; Michael Ben Saadon, 27; and Israel Samolia, 26. Almaliakh and Ben Saadon opened the bakery eight months ago, according to Israeli media reports, and Samolia worked there.

The Islamic Jihad official in Gaza said a group called the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades-Army of the Believers, which he characterized as an offshoot of Fatah's armed wing, also participated in the attack. He called on all Palestinian armed groups to stop their internal fighting and "point their arms, all their arms, at the Zionist enemy."

Fatah officials condemned the bombing, saying it undermined the party's goal of reviving peace negotiations with Israel. But Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for Hamas, which won parliamentary elections a year ago and controls the Palestinian ministries, said that "all the Palestinian people and factions support this martyr operation."

"This type of operation is a normal response to the occupation and the violation of our rights as a Palestinian people," said Barhoum, who also cited the international aid boycott against the Palestinian government imposed after Hamas's election as justification for the attack.

In a statement, the White House said: "The burden of responsibility for preventing terrorist attacks rests with the Palestinian Authority government. Failure to act against terror will inevitably affect relations between that government and the international community and undermine the aspirations of the Palestinian people for a state of their own."

The Islamic Jihad official said the bombing was retaliation for Israeli military operations in Gaza, many of which have swept through Beit Lahiya over the past six months, and assassinations of the group's members.

Islamic Jihad has not agreed to any cease-fire agreements with Israel, and frequently fires rockets at Israeli towns along the Gaza border. Israeli military airstrikes have killed many Islamic Jihad gunmen on their way to fire rockets.