A suicide bomber detonated himself outside a café in Petach Tikva's Em Hamoshavot shopping mall Monday evening. Two Israelis were killed - an Israeli woman in her 50s and her 18-month-old granddaughter - and nearly 50 people were wounded, four of them seriously.

"We went into the café and ordered ice cream. All of a sudden there was a huge explosion, and my baby flew out of her stroller. My god, there was a lot of blood flowing from her head! My mother was lying on the ground, not moving."

With these words, a Petach Tikva resident recalled the moments of horror in which she lost her young daughter and her mother at the entrance of the mall's Bravissimo café. The woman and her husband were lightly injured by shrapnel in the bomb blast.

The victims of the attack were identified as Ruth Peled, 56, from Herzliya; and her granddaughter, Sinai Kinan.

The bombing occurred shortly before 7 p.m., when the café and a nearby ice cream parlor were crowded with families and young children. The terrorist reportedly tried to enter the Super Center supermarket, but when he spotted a security guard, he instead turned towards the café.

"I saw children screaming," said Haim Hayak, a taxi driver who was standing 100 meters away, CNN reported. "There was a mother and a father, 10, maybe 15 people. They were all crying and screaming. There was a lot of blood. There were children on the floor...on their heads was lots of blood."

"I saw the bomber," a woman who gave her name as Ravit told Reuters, cradling her baby from her hospital bed. "He was wearing jeans and a gray shirt. He looked weird. He looked to me for a second like someone who could potentially be a terrorist," she said. "Then, after a few seconds, we heard an explosion." Another eyewitness said that the terrorist mumbled to himself shortly before he exploded.

Police began checking into unconfirmed reports of cars seen speeding away from the scene. The entire area outside the shopping mall was closed as security forces searched for additional explosive charges.

Police stressed the importance of having security guards stationed at the entrance to the mall, saying that the number of casualties would have been much greater if the terrorist had exploded inside an enclosed area.

Local residents said the suicide bombing, Petach Tikva's first in the current wave of terror, was only a matter of time. "This place is full of children. There is no security, except for the guard outside the supermarket," said Nir Sade, who was lightly injured as he sat at a nearby coffeehouse. Maariv reported that the shopping mall did employ security guards who patrol the building, but they were inside the building at the time of the attack.

Police Central Command Chief Yehuda Bachar told reporters that there had been general warnings of potential terror attacks in the Sharon region for a number of hours Monday afternoon, but no specific warnings had indicated that the attack would occur in Petach Tikva.

Interior Minister Uzi Landau, who visited the shopping mall shortly after the attack, said that the construction of a proposed security fence along Israel's seam line would not bring peace as long as the Palestinian Authority remained in power. "We have a strategic problem with the Palestinian Authority, with its power structure and educational system that teaches sending young children to blow themselves up among us," he said.

The Palestinian Authority condemned the attack, but the military wing of PA Chairman Yasser Arafat's Fatah party claimed credit. "The Palestinian leadership, which together with the Palestinian people is under continued Israeli aggression, condemns the terrorist attack that targeted Israeli civilians in Petah Tikva," said an official statement issued in Gaza.

In a statement issued to the Hizbullah's al-Manar television station in Lebanon, the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade said, "We will not stop our operations as long as the occupation continues in our land."

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