A 22-year-old Palestinian mother of two small children, pretending to be disabled, killed four Israelis at a Gaza border crossing yesterday after duping soldiers into allowing her a personal security check rather than going through a metal detector.
The Islamic resistance movement Hamas and the al-Aqsa Martyrs brigade said the attack by Reem Riyashi, from Gaza City, was a joint operation in revenge for weeks of Israeli incursions into West Bank cities that have left about 25 Palestinians dead.
It was the first time Hamas had used a woman as a human bomb.
She left a videotaped message in which she was pictured in combat fatigues, holding an automatic rifle and with a rocket-propelled grenade in front of her. She said she had dreamed since she was 13 of turning ”my body into deadly shrapnel against the Zionists”.
”I always wanted to be the first woman to carry out a martyrdom operation, where parts of my body can fly all over,” she said. ”God has given me two children. I love them [with] a kind of love that only God knows, but my love to meet God is stronger still.”
Riyashi detonated her 2kg bomb inside a building used to check thousands of Palestinians who cross each day from Gaza to work in a neighbouring industrial zone. The Israeli army said that when she reached the metal detector, the suicide bomber pretended to be crippled and said she had metal plates in her leg which would sound the alarm. She asked to be checked with a body search.
She was taken to an area where a group of soldiers and policemen was checking bags and was told to wait for a woman to come and search her in a cubicle. She then detonated the explosive.
The blast tore open the corrugated iron roof and sent shards of metal and glass ripping through the room. Soldiers used putty knives and pieces of plastic skirting board to scrape strips of flesh from the floor and walls.
All the dead were Israelis: two soldiers, a policeman and a civilian security worker. Seven other Israelis and about four Palestinians were injured.
The Gaza divisional commander, Brigadier-General Gadi Shamni, described the attack as a cynical abuse of his soldiers’ attempts to treat women with dignity.
”We’re doing our best to be humanitarian, to consider the problems associated with searching women. She said she had a medical problem, that’s why the soldiers let her in, to check her in private because she is a woman,” he said. ”That’s a very cruel, cynical use of the humanitarian considerations of our soldiers.”
The attack came after months of relative quiet by the Palestinians which has seen few suicide bombings. An attack on Christmas Day by Islamic Jihad killed four Israelis. Last week, a teenage suicide bomber killed himself, but no one else. Prior to those attacks, there had been no bombings since October.
However, the spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, on Wednesday warned that other women would follow Riyashi’s example.
Her family swiftly set up the traditional memorial tent near her home in Gaza City. Her relatives offered neither praise for her attack nor an explanation of why a mother with children just three years and 18 months old should choose to become a suicide bomber.
Her family is wealthy, whereas most bombers come from poorer backgrounds. She is the eighth female suicide bomber, but only one other had children.
At Riyashi’s house, her brother-in-law, Yusuf Awad, was dismantling the main gate and moving out furniture in preparation for the arrival of an Israeli army demolition team, which usually blows up the homes of suicide bombers.
”I denounce her attack,” he said. ”I support peace. We don’t accept women doing such things. She has two children. It is not right.”
A Hamas official at a memorial service in the local mosque, who called himself Abu Jihad, said there would be more such women bombers.
”We should expect that more female martyr warriors will do this. It is allowed in Islam because Hamas saw that it is no longer easy to send a male warrior to attack them [the Israelis]. This year will see a large number of women joining in the attacks,” he said.
The Israeli military responded by immediately closing the Gaza crossings to Palestinians for several days.
”They’re always trying to kill, even if they hurt themselves,” said Lieutenant Ayelet Kadosh. ”What will happen is that while we are investigating the crossing will be closed and thousands of Palestinians will go hungry because they cannot go to work.”
About 4 000 Palestinians work in factories in the sealed industrial zone connected to Gaza, frequently providing for extended families in Gaza where there is 70% unemployment. Another 14 000 Palestinians cross from Gaza to Israel each day. The military swiftly ordered Palestinians out of the factories and, under heavy guard, sent them home. – Guardian Unlimited Â