Police arrest Palestinians in Galilee explosion

The Palestinian police said yesterday that they detained two brothers who are suspected of being involved in manufacturing a bomb that exploded in the West Bank on Sunday in an incident that might be related to the Hamas resistance movement.

The Palestinian police said they had detained nearly 100 members of Hamas after an explosion in a store in a Galilee city and that the manufacturers of the bomb were planning for an attack in which they used a car loaded with explosives, yet no one got hurt.

Abd El-Fatah El-Geaidi, head of the Galilee police, said to Israel Radio, "The place is owned by four brothers, two of whom were arrested by us for interrogation yet the other two are not yet arrested."

He added, "We confiscated some primitive explosives."

The explosion took place in the Palestinian side of the divided Galilee City in which 400 Jewish citizens live among 100,000 Palestinian citizens.

Palestinian officials said that two of the suspects are known members of Hamas who were released by Israel four months ago after spending five years in Israeli prisons on the charge of belonging to Hamas.