TEL AVIV, Israel -- Palestinian guerrillas claimed responsibility for a grenade packed in a parcel that exploded in a suburban Tel Aviv post office, killing three people and wounding seven others in one of the worst such incidents in Israel this year.
The package placed on a counter in the main post office in Givatayim exploded Sunday, blasting a hole in the ceiling and blowing out the windows of a bank next door.
Police said the grenade inside the package exploded as soon as the woman to whom it was addressed started to open it at the post office counter.
It was the second explosion in Givatayim in two weeks. A time bomb exploded in a bus station lavatory Sept. 23, wounding a janitor.
Police arrested several Arab suspects in connection with Sunday's blast, which coincided with the eve of the 7th anniversary of the 1973 Middle East war.
Police said they suspected the explosion was the work of Arab terrorists but did not rule out that it might have been criminally motivated.
(In Beirut, the Palestine Liberation Organization said its guerrillas were responsible for planting the device.)
Two of those killed died instantly and a third died of wounds at a hospital. One of the wounded was in critical condition after emergency surgery for massive head wounds.
Witnesses said seven customers were in the post office when the package exploded, causing part of the ceiling to fall in and burying one woman in the rubble.
The blast caused the largest number of deaths from an explosion in Israel proper since May 23, 1979, when a bomb exploded at a bus stop in suburban Petah Tikva, killing three and wounding 13.
The Israeli Cabinet Sunday expressed shock at Friday's explosion outside a Paris synagogue that killed three people, noting that 'terror organizations at work in France and other countries collaborate with the terrorist murder group called the PLO.'
A state funeral was ordered for the Israeli woman killed in the Paris blast.
