thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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 Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2008 5:57 am Post subject: First suicide attack in Israel in a year |
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DIMONA, Israel -- A Palestinian carried out the first suicide bombing in Israel in a year on Monday, killing a woman in a desert town where a top-secret nuclear reactor is located.
Police said they prevented a second blast in Dimona's shopping centre by shooting dead an accomplice before he could detonate an explosives belt.
"It was like a war. People were running like crazy. I saw a piece of a human being right there, next to my leg," witness Rosa Enberg told Israel's Channel Two television.
A Gaza-based source in President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction said the "Army of Palestine" wing of Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades launched the attack along with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
A Fatah official in the West Bank denied al-Aqsa involvement. The conflicting statements reflected divisions in Fatah as leader Abbas pursues U.S.-backed peace talks with Israel for the first time in seven years.
Two other militant groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, praised the bombing as a blow against "Israeli occupation" and retaliation for Israeli attacks.
Young supporters of Fatah handed out flowers and candy to passing cars in the southern Gaza city of Rafah to celebrate.
Abbas condemned the Dimona bombing but was also critical of an earlier military raid by Israel in the occupied West Bank.
Police said the suicide bomber blew himself up in Dimona's busy commercial centre, killing himself and the Israeli woman.
"The second terrorist was shot in the head as he tried to set off his bomb belt," said Yossi Porianta, the police chief in Israel's southern Negev region. The Magen David Adom ambulance service said another 10 people were wounded.
Israel's top-secret Dimona nuclear reactor, which is widely believed to have produced atomic bombs, is located in a heavily guarded compound on the outskirts of town.
Hours after the suicide bombing, an Israeli air strike in the Gaza Strip critically wounded Amer Qarmout, a senior commander in the militant group, the Popular Resistance Committees, which carries out cross-border rocket attacks.
The Dimona blast raised speculation in Israel that a Palestinian militant from the Gaza Strip had infiltrated from nearby Egypt after Hamas Islamists blasted open the territory's border at Rafah late last month.
Egypt has since sealed the breach.
"One of the concerns ... was that hardcore terrorists would be filtering down out of Gaza and coming back into Israel through the [Egyptian-Israeli] border," an Israeli government official said.
The attack occurred several weeks after Israel and the Palestinians resumed peace talks opposed by Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.
Israel has said it would not allow militant groups to derail the U.S.-backed negotiations, but would protect its citizens.
"Israel will continue fighting against the murderous terrorism," Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said after the bombing.
A Palestinian suicide bomber last struck in Israel on January 29, 2007, killing three people in the southern resort town of Eilat, on the Red Sea. |
http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=285303 |
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