JERUSALEM, Dec. 5 -- A Palestinian man detonated an explosive device Monday morning outside a crowded shopping mall in the seaside city of Netanya, killing at least five Israelis and himself while wounding more than 30 others.

The suicide attack was the first in Israel [successfully carried out -S] since late October, when a bomber killed six Israelis at an outdoor market in the nearby city of Hadera, and the second to strike Netanya's Hasharon Mall this year...

...Witnesses described a huge blast that shook the walls of the glass-and-steel mall and left bodies scattered in the intersection at the eastern entrance to the city, which sits about 10 miles from the West Bank border marked by Israel's separation barrier.

"An enormous mushroom cloud of smoke rose from the place," Zion Vatouri, the owner of the Auto Plus car dealership across from the mall, told the Israeli news Web site Ynet. "The injured were screaming. The image etched in my mind was of a man wearing a light-blue shirt lying there, not moving. Only after they covered him with a blanket did I know he was dead."

It was initially unclear who was responsible for the attack, which occurred around 11:30 a.m. local time. But it appeared to be the work of Islamic Jihad, a small radical Palestinian faction that rejects Israel's right to exist.

An official for the group asserted responsibility for the bombing in a telephone call to the al-Manar satellite television channel. The station is owned by Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite Muslim movement at war with Israel, which like Islamic Jihad receives a portion of its funding from Iran...

"Those who are responsible should be hunted down by the Palestinian police. The Palestinian Authority will have no tolerance for such actions."

This week, he approved the budget designed to take care of families of such terrorists to whom the PA refers to in official documents as Shahids, i.e., "martyrs." Each family will get $250 a month from the PA. Married ones get an extra $50 and children $25 per child. All in all, $11,000,000 will be paid by these official terror paymasters to the families of men they supposedly condemn. Of course, these families receive additional sums from "charities."