MIDDLE EAST: A Palestinian woman suicide bomber blew herself up near a hitch-hiking post in Jerusalem yesterday, killing two people and wounding 15 in the first such attack in the city in seven months.
The blast tore through the mainly Jewish district of French Hill in East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move not recognised internationally.
Witnesses said a young woman, wearing a headscarf, blew herself up as she approached a security position near a hitch-hiking post used mostly by soldiers.
"She threw her head back and then there was an explosion," one witness, Ms Debbie Segal, told Army Radio. "A few seconds later, her body burst into flames." The blast - which sprayed body parts and broken glass over the pavement - shattered a sense of security that had begun returning to public places in Jerusalem, hardest hit by such attacks during a four-year-old Palestinian uprising.
The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group in President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, claimed responsibility, saying it was avenging Israel's recent killing of several of its members in the West Bank cities of Nablus and Jenin.
After ambulances cleared away the dead and wounded, workers from ultra-Orthodox funeral societies went to work picking up bits of flesh and bone for burial under Jewish law.
"In many cases we prevent heavy disasters. Sometimes things happen like what happened today," said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who learned of the bombing while being interviewed by Israeli television ahead of the Yom Kippur fasting day, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar.
"But we intend to continue our struggle against terror with all force," he vowed.
Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat said: "We condemn this attack and any attack that targets civilians, whether Palestinians or Israelis."
The blast came three weeks after two suicide bombers killed 16 people on buses in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba. The militant group Hamas said it struck in Beersheba to avenge Israel's killing of two of its leaders in Gaza.
That was Hamas's first use of a woman suicide bomber. It said it had sent a woman because of growing Israeli security "obstacles" facing its male bombers. Yesterday's bombing was the eighth by a woman in four years of violence, Israeli media said.
Emergency officials said two people were killed and at least 15 wounded, including a 9-year-old boy, in the latest attack.
Violence has surged in recent months since Mr Sharon introduced his plan to evacuate Jewish settlers from all enclaves in the Gaza Strip and four of 120 in the West Bank by the end of 2005.
Militants want to claim victory in any Israeli pullout, but the army is determined to smash armed factions before leaving.
Israel sees French Hill as a neighbourhood of Jerusalem but it is viewed internationally as an illegal settlement built on occupied land.
Ms Segal said she was on her way home from work at a hospital at the time of the attack. "I noticed a pretty young Arab woman coming to the hitch-hiking post," she said.
"The border policeman was in a security post nearby. He called her and she came to him and made a head gesture making believe she didn't understand him. He continued talking to her and she answered him," Ms Segal said. The woman then blew herself up, reducing the cramped guard post to a shattered skeleton. - (Reuters)