ISRAEL: Some Muslim clerics in the Palestinian territories have been known to preach support for suicide bombings against Israel, but Abdel-Hamid Mask was the first to turn sermon into action.
Mask, a 29-year-old imam from the West Bank city of Hebron, blew himself up aboard a Jerusalem bus on Tuesday, killing 18 people, including five children, in an attack claimed by the militant group Hamas.
He left a wife and two children, as well as an unfinished doctorate in Islamic law.
"I thank God that my husband has become a martyr," Mask's widow Areej said after leaving the family home in anticipation of an Israeli demolition order - a standard reprisal against the families of militants waging a 34-month-old uprising for independence.
Mask was the latest to defy a bomber profile that has been all but abandoned by Israeli security officials - that of a single, destitute young man with nothing to lose.
Several recent bombings have been carried out by married men and even women, some from middle-class families. Mask was videotaped before setting off with a Koran in one hand and rifle in the other.
Setting a precedent, he spoke in broken English as well as Arabic, urging viewers to assassinate Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Mask's relatives said he had spent a year in an Israeli jail in 1990 on a false charge and was embittered by ill-treatment there. Mask was also infuriated by Israel's killing this month of a distant relative, Mohammed Seder, a leader of Islamic Jihad, in a gunfight.Hamas described Mask's suicide bombing as a once-off revenge attack and said the truce would hold.