Israel holds bomb suspects in city

Israel claimed yesterday to have cracked a 15-man cell of Hamas bombers responsible for some of the deadliest recent attacks against civilians, which was operating in the heart of Jerusalem.

Triumphant Israeli officials said they had arrested key members of a unit, whom they accused of killing 35 people. The death toll includes nine killed in a bombing in a student cafeteria at Jerusalem's Hebrew University last month, five of them Americans.

Four of the five arrested men are from Arab east Jerusalem. They included a Palestinian house painter employed by the Hebrew University, agents from the Shin Bet security service said. They accused him of planting the bomb under a bush the night before it detonated.

The 200,000 Arab residents of east Jerusalem, which was occupied and – in a move unrecognised internationally – annexed after the 1967 war, have remained largely apart from the violence of the past two years. Tensions have risen from time to time, stoked by occasional house demolitions by the Israeli authorities, and Israel's decision to block off adjoining Palestinian neighbourhoods just outside the city's boundaries.

The Israeli mayor of Jerusalem, Ehud Olmert, said: "This is something I feared. I assumed that things below the surface were not as [calm as] they seemed."

Four of the arrested men – who were picked up at the weekend – reportedly had Israeli identity papers, allowing them to move around the city, including the seat of government. According to the Israeli security services, this enabled them to dispatch a suicide bomber to a café outside Ariel Sharon's Jerusalem residence in March, killing 11. Officials also accused them of being behind a suicide attack at a billiards hall near Tel Aviv in May, in which 15 people were killed and 45 injured.

The announcement overshadowed another day in which the latest attempt at a truce – the so-called "Gaza First" security agreement – withered further on the vine. Israeli troops, tanks and helicopters descended on a Palestinian refugee camp in the Gaza Strip and blew up several large buildings in answer to the killing of an Israeli soldier on Tuesday by a Hamas sniper.

Residents said the explosions caused nearby houses to collapse, including one that caved in on top of a Palestinian man, killing him.