Region | Palestinian Territories
Bomber strikes Israel nuclear reactor town
A Palestinian suicide bomber killed a woman in southern Israel in the first such attack in a year.
- Reuters
- Published: 23:58 February 4, 2008
- Image Credit: Reuters
- A member of the Israeli police bomb squad surveys the scene of the suicide bombing in the southern town of Dimona on Monday. A Palestinian carried out the first suicide bombing in Israel in a year on Monday, killing a woman.
Dimona, Israel: A Palestinian suicide bomber from the Gaza Strip killed a woman in southern Israel on Monday, the first such attack in the country in a year, but Israeli officials said peace talks would not be derailed.
Police said they prevented a second blast in the shopping centre of the town of Dimona by shooting dead an accomplice before he could detonate an explosives belt.
One of the attackers said in a farewell video recording he wanted to strike against Israel's siege of the Gaza Strip.
Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor, widely believed to have produced atomic bombs, is located in a heavily guarded compound on the outskirts of the town.
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).
Wearing military-style fatigues and clutching an assault rifle, one of the bombers, 20-year-old Loai Al Aghwani, from Gaza City, said in his videotape he hoped his actions would "restore dignity to the Palestinian people".
Standing in front of an Al Aqsa Brigades banner, Aghwani appealed to Abbas and Khaled Mesha'al, a Hamas leader, "to end internal division". A Fatah official in the West Bank denied Al Aqsa involvement.
Abbas, who is holding the first peace talks with Israel in seven years, condemned the Dimona bombing but also criticised an earlier military raid by Israel in the occupied West Bank.
"Abu Mazen (Abbas) is a moderate who wants peace. We will continue to negotiate with him," an Israeli official said.
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.
Israeli officials said the two bombers might have entered Egyptian territory after the Gaza-Egypt border was blasted open by Hamas last month, and then infiltrated into Israel through its unfenced frontier with Egypt.
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