Palestinian bomber talks on video of vengeance

Palestinian suicide bomber Mahmoud Ahmed Marmash, who blew up himself and five Israelis in the Israeli city of Netanya, left behind a videotape saying he did it to avenge Israeli killings of Palestinian civilians.

The militant wing of the Islamic group Hamas distributed the tape to news agencies a day after Friday's attack on a Netanya shopping mall that also wounded at least 110 Israelis. "I will make my body a bomb that will blast the bodies of Zionists, the sons of monkeys and pigs, to avenge every drop of blood spilt on the soil of Jerusalem," Marmash said in the video taped on Friday before he carried out the bombing.

"(And) to avenge the killing of the people of Palestine, its women, elderly and children, to avenge the killing of Iman Hejjo, whose death shook my conscience and being," he added, referring to the death earlier this month of a four-month-old Palestinian baby as a result of shelling in Gaza.

The video showed Marmash, a 21-year-old grocery store worker from the West Bank town of Tulkarm, sitting on the floor framed by the green flags of Hamas with an M-16 assault rifle next to him. He wore a green headband with the phrase "There is no God but God" on it.

Marmash, a devout Muslim, said he was a member of Hamas's military wing, Izz el-Din Al Dassam, which has carried out repeated bombings in Israel. He read verses from the Quran and said jihad (holy war) was the only way to end the "oppression" of Palestinians by Israelis who have occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip since a 1967 Middle East war.

"We in the Qassam Brigades reiterate that the option of resistance and jihad is the only option and that...suicide bombers shake the depths of the Zionist entity," he said. Hamas said on Friday that one of its suicide bombers blew himself up at the entrance to a crowded mall in the seaside city of Netanya in central Israel. The group promised more attacks.

Hassan Youssef, a senior Hamas activist in the West Bank town of Ramallah, said the bombing avenged Israel's killing earlier this week of five paramilitary Palestinian policemen near Ramallah and of the Palestinian baby Iman Hejjo.

The Palestinian Authority condemned the attack and urged Israel to demonstrate restraint. Israel retaliated by attacking Palestinian police headquarters in the West Bank and Gaza with warplanes and helicopter gunships, killing at least 12 Palestinian policemen.