Palestinian gunmen killed six Israelis and wounded 34 in Israel today hours after missile and bomb strikes on Israelis in Kenya, overshadowing a vote that could decide Israel's next leader.
Police said two gunmen went on a shooting rampage at a crowded Likud polling station in the northern Israeli town of Beit Shean, a bastion of Likud voters near borders with the West Bank and Jordan.
In the West Bank city of Hebron, a three-year-old Palestinian boy died of shrapnel wounds. The boy's father said Israeli soldiers shot him while he was standing in a window.
Israeli military sources said an explosive device thrown at soldiers patrolling the area hit the wall of the boy's home and caused his wounds. They said soldiers did not return fire.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, facing a party leadership challenge today before a January 28th general election, accused the Palestinian Authority, Arab states and "terror organisations" of using violence to influence Israeli elections.
Mr Sharon is widely tipped to win the right-wing Likud party's leadership ballot against his Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has vowed tougher action against a two-year-old Palestinian uprising for an independent state.
A surge in Palestinian gun and suicide attacks in the uprising had already thrust security to the top of the agenda in the contest before today's violence.
Mr Sharon has had to juggle conflicting pressures to both look tough before the January 28 general election and avoid an intensification of the conflict with Palestinians that could harm US efforts to win Arab support for possible war on Iraq.
The prime minister told a nationally televised news conference that Israel had evidence "the Palestinians and the terror organisations and the Palestinian Authority and also Arab states want to influence the democratic process, the elections and that terror is one of their tools". He gave no details.
Mr Sharon urged Likud members to vote as normal today despite the latest attacks.
In the latest violence, Israeli medics said six Israelis were killed and 34 were wounded before the gunmen were shot dead.
"The situation here is that they infiltrated and fired indiscriminately hundreds of bullets and hit many people," said Beit Shean Mayor Pini Kabalo.
The attack caused panic among voters and activists at the polling station. "There were rounds and rounds of fire. We have friends and neighbours who were killed," one witness said.
The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, said it carried out the attack to avenge the deaths of two militant commanders in the West Bank on Tuesday that they blamed on Israel.