AFP
Woman Palestinian suicide bomber kills two Israeli police in Jerusalem
Date: Wednesday September 22
JERUSALEM (AFP) - Two Israeli border policemen were killed and 17 other people were wounded when a teenage Palestinian suicide bomber blew herself up at a police checkpoint next to several bus stops in Jerusalem.
The woman detonated some four kilos (nine pounds) of explosives she had hidden in a bag, police spokesman Gil Kleiman told AFP.
The casualty toll would have been much higher if it had not been for the border policemen who intercepted the woman as she was approaching the scene, Jerusalem district police chief Ilan Franco said.
Kleiman said that the attack, in an area where there have been at least four previous suicide attacks, came after police had been put on "a higher warning level in the past two days".
A spokesman for a radical Palestinian group, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, claimed responsibility for the attack in a phone call to AFP's offices in the West Bank town of Jenin.
He said the attack was in retaliation for the recent killings by Israeli forces of senior members of his group.
Sources in the organisation, an offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, later identified the bomber as 18-year-old Zainab Ali Abu Salem from a refugee camp in the Nablus region of the northern West Bank.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has accused Arafat of giving the green light to anti-Israeli attacks, renewed his threats against his arch-enemy earlier Wednesday.
He insisted Arafat "would get what he deserves" as he recalled the fate of two assassinated leaders of the radical Hamas movement.
"I have already said that we have acted against the heads of Hamas and against others in the manner that we have judged the most appropriate and at a time we judge most convenient," Sharon told public radio.
"When the time comes to deal with this case (Arafat), we will act in the same fashion."
Speaking on Israeli television after the attack, Sharon vowed there would be no let-up in his government's fight against militant groups.
"This attack is very serious and we will be forced to continue our fight against terrorism. There can be no compromise with terrorism," he said.
Meanwhile at the United Nations on Wednesday the four sponsors of the "roadmap" for Middle East peace gave a gloomy assessment of their near moribund plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, lamenting that "no significant progress" has been made in implementing the year-old proposal.
Meeting just hours after the suicide bombing in Jerusalem, the international diplomatic quartet said it remained committed to the plan despite the lack of results but called for renewed action from both Israel and the Palestinians to make it a reality.
"The situation on the ground for both Palestinians and Israelis remains extremely difficult and no significant progress has been achieved on the roadmap," the quartet -- the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia -- said in a joint statement.
The group, which met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, expressed "deep concern" that control of the Palestinian security services had yet to be turned over to prime minister Ahmed Qorei and his cabinet and urged Palestinian authorities to once again rein in extremist groups.
Sharon said Wednesday that Israel's withdrawal of troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip would start in the summer of 2005 and last 12 weeks.
By the end of 2005, Sharon plans an Israeli pullout from Gaza and its 21 settlements as well as four isolated settlements in the northern West Bank, under his proposal for the Jewish state to disengage from the Palestinians.
The Jerusalem bombing was swiftly condemned by the Palestinian Authority, with negotiations minister Saeb Erakat condemning "all acts targeting Palestinian and Israeli civilians".
Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qorei called for "an immediate halt to such acts which give Israel a pretext to continue the assassinations, the eliminations and the invasions" of Palestinian territory.
International condemnation was led by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan who "urged the Palestinian Authority to take all necessary measures to put an end to terror and to bring to justice the organisers of such heinous crimes".
Earlier in the day, a member of another Palestinian militant group, Islamic Jihad, was killed by Israeli gunfire in the northern Gaza Strip.
Jihad and the Israeli army said Ossama al-Araj had been trying to plant an explosive near the Erez border crossing.
The latest deaths brought the overall toll since the start of the Palestinian intifada four years ago to 4,328, including 3,312 Palestinians and 945 Israelis.
Sharon also said he did not fear death threats from far-right opponents of his Gaza pullout plan.
"I don't wear a bullet-proof vest, full stop. I'm not afraid of these threats," the prime minister told Israel's private Channel 2 television. "I have faced far more dangerous situations over the years. I carry out my duties and do my job."
Former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish right-wing extremist in November 1995 for handing over land to the Palestinians under the Oslo autonomy accords.
SOURCE
FAIR USE NOTICE
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.