A Palestinian woman suicide bomber struck at the main border crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip this morning, killing four Israelis and wounding seven people.
Militant group Hamas, which claimed joint responsibility for the attack along with the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, vowed to escalate attacks in a more than three-year-old uprising.
An Israeli soldier wounded by a Palestinian female suicide bomber, arrives at the hospital in the town of Ashkelon.
The woman, identified by Hamas as a 22-year-old mother of two, blew herself up in a terminal where Palestinian labourers from the fenced-in Strip were being put through Israeli security checks before entering a nearby industrial complex. It was the first time a woman was used by Hamas in such an attack.
"Glass and black smoke flew everywhere. Arabs were screaming, Jews were screaming," said a Palestinian witness, her clothes stained with the blood of others.
A senior Israeli army officer said the dead included soldiers and least one Israeli civilian. Security sources said four Palestinians were among the wounded.
It was the first Palestinian suicide attack since a December 25th bombing that killed four Israelis near Tel Aviv, and raised further doubts about the prospects for reviving a US-backed peace "road map" stalled by persistent violence. Hamas, the main group behind a campaign of suicide bombings during three years of violence, said it sent a woman for the first time because of growing Israeli security "obstacles" facing its male bombers.
The move could pose new dangers to the Jewish state, which has already been hit several times by woman bombers dispatched by smaller militant groups.