Fifteen people were injured when a Palestinian suicide bomber disguised as a bearded ultra-Orthodox Jew blew himself up in Jerusalem today.
A policeman who confronted the bomber just before he detonated an explosives-filled bag on his back said he died with a smile on his face.
"Policemen saw that he was an Arab who dressed up as a Jew and stopped him," Jerusalem police chief Mr Mickey Levy told reporters. "They prevented a much greater tragedy by stopping him before he could reach a busier area."
Mr Levy said the bomber blew himself up on the edge of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Mea Shearim.
Calling the attack a "terrible criminal act," Mr Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, toured the scene of the bombing. He was heckled by Israelis, one of whom shouted in English: "Garbage, take your luggage and leave Israel now."
Mr Solana has been trying to arrange truce talks between Palestinian President Mr Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Mr Shimon Peres, possibly as early as Friday on the sidelines of a business conference near the Italian city of Milan.
From Jerusalem, Mr Solana travelled to Gaza, where he held talks with Mr Arafat and later told reporters the two sides were getting closer to setting a date for the meeting between Mr Peres and the Palestinian leader.
Mr Peres and Mr Arafat shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 for their role in reaching interim peace accords, but recent meetings between them have done little to curb more nearly a year of violence in which more than 700 people have died.