Five people were killed and about 50 wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the Stage club on the Tel Aviv promenade at around 11:20 P.M. on Friday evening. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.
The suicide attack was the first since the Sharm el-Sheikh summit on February 8, at which Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas announced a cease-fire.
On Friday evening, friends arrived from all over the country - from Mishmar Hayarden, Tiberias, Shlomi, Jerusalem and Kfar Sava - for a surprise birthday party of their friend Yaron Grayevsky at the Stage Club in Tel Aviv. As young men in their 20s and 30s from the Golani, Givati and Nahal Brigades, they met eight years ago in an IDF reserves battalion and became fast friends. Just after 11 P.M., when Yaron was still waiting at a nearby hotel, the suicide bomber detonated himself at the entrance to the club.
All five of those killed in the attack were attending the birthday party: Itzik from Mishmar Hayarden, whose wife Linda was severely injured, Ronen, who organized the battalion's reunions, Arik, who was the joker in the group, and Yael Orbach from Kfar Sava, who came to celebrate with her boyfriend, Ofir Gonen, and Odelia, who together with her friend Revital Grayevsky, organized the surprise party for Yaron. Fifty people were wounded.
The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack. IDF sources said the cell that dispatched the suicide bomber, Abdallah Badran, 21, a student from the village of Deir al Ghusun near Tul Karm, received its instructions directly from Damascus.