International
Woman suicide bomber rattles Israel
Jerusalem, JAN. 28. A Palestinian woman was killed when the bomb she was carrying exploded in a Jerusalem street on Sunday. It was the first attack by a female in Israel in more than 16 months of conflict.
The woman, a student in her twenties, was blown to pieces when the device went off outside a shoe shop in Jaffa Street. An 81-year-old Israeli man was killed and more than 100 other people injured. One of the injured was Mark Sokolov, 43, a New York lawyer who survived the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre.
The bomber was named by Hezbollah television as Shahanaz Al Amouri, from Al Najah University in Nablus. No group claimed responsibility. Israel's Shin Bet security service described the university as a "hothouse for suicide bombers". While women have worked as accomplices on terrorist operations during this intifada, none had previously undertaken such a mission.
As a woman, the bomber would have raised fewer suspicions, even on Jaffa Street, where 10 previous attacks have killed 96 Israelis and wounded hundreds. The use of female bombers marked a dramatic tactical shift by Palestinian groups seeking to exploit the security forces' hesitation to search Muslim women.
While checks on Palestinian men at roadblocks and elsewhere are rigorous, they are much less so for women because of the acute sensitivities involved. Some Israeli sources said the woman could have been a bomb-carrier rather than a suicide attacker. But senior army officials were working on the assumption that she was a suicide attacker. One said: "This is big trouble. We are already stretched and, if we are facing women as well as men, it will make it much more difficult for us. "If women are now prepared to do this, the potential for recruitment is much higher than we suspected. It may take some time to work out how to deal with this."
The Authority condemned the attack. In a statement, it called on the United States, which last week postponed a truce mission, to send its envoy back to the region. Islamic radicals among the Palestinian community may be gambling that the attack will trigger a cycle of conflict. The possibility of stricter checks on Palestinian women will inflame passions at a time of already high tension.
There was further blow for Israel as a crowd of 70 people broke into a Palestinian jail in Bethlehem and freed six militants, including one man on Israel's "most wanted" list. Raanan Gissin, an Israeli government spokesman, blamed the Palestinian Authority for the jail break. "I expect it is part of their revolving-door policy on militants," he said. "If they do not let them out themselves, they let them get sprung." —
Reuters reports from Tel Aviv:
Israeli police shot dead a man who ran over a policeman today and was suspected of bursting through a military roadblock from the West Bank into Israel, police said.
The police were unable immediately to confirm reports by Israel's Army Radio that the man was Palestinian and had opened fire on passersby, wounding one.
Ambulances rushed to the scene on the edge of Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv. "A driver in a car who had apparently broken through a roadblock reached Ramat Gan," a police spokesman said. "He ran over a policemen and dragged him several metres. Police from the nearby police station ran out and shot him."
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