Many of the staff at the Israeli take-away food stall devastated by a Palestinian suicide bomber yesterday have been doubly traumatised - as the stall had already been targeted by bombers three months ago.

Jachun Ismailov, 17, whose family emigrated to Israel from Azerbaijan, said that poverty had forced him to return to work at the Tel Aviv take-away within days of the first suicide bomb attack in January.

Lying in a hospital bed after the second bombing, the softly-spoken 17-year-old said that, once again, he had no choice but to go back to the Mayor's Falafel, if the owners ever decide to reopen.

"I was very afraid to return to work there after the first attack," said Ismailov, who was being treated for cuts to his hands and back. "But later, the economic situation at home was not good and I came back."

Jachun explained that his family has struggled financially since arriving in Israel. His cousin David Manshirov, 17, in the next bed, said: "If I don’t work, who will pay the rent?" David, a cook at the Mayor's Falafel, was also injured in both bombings.

They at least escaped with their lives - others were not so lucky. Benny Hafuta, 47, was taken on as a security guard days after the initial attack. His job was to ensure that another bomber would never get into the restaurant. He succeeded, but it cost his life.

His family had repeatedly tried to get him to quit, afraid that the restaurant would be targeted again. "There is no such thing as an attack two times in one place," Mr Hafuta told them, the Yediot Ahronot newspaper reported today.

Mr Hafuta was searching the bomber before letting him enter the restaurant when his hand-held metal detector went off. Then the bomber detonated the explosives killing nine people and wounding 36.

A French tourist and two Romanian women working in Israel were among the dead. The casualties included a 16-year-old American boy who is fighting for life after 12 hours of emergency surgery at the Tel Aviv Medical Centre, on a torn aorta and injuries to his stomach and internal organs.

Just before the bombing, Radmila Shaulov, the nine-month-pregnant wife of one of the victims, arranged to meet her husband, David, 29, at a Tel Aviv hospital as she thought she was going into labour. But when she arrived, she heard he might have been killed.

Finding she was not actually in labour, she went to the morgue and discovered that her husband was lying inside, dead.

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