The Israeli military has accused a faction of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement of using an 11-year-old boy as an unwitting human bomb after the child was discovered carrying explosive through an army checkpoint in Nablus.
The army says Abdullah Quran’s life was saved only because a mobile phone rigged as a detonator failed to set off the explosive when he was stopped on Monday.
The boy was released after several hours of questioning and returned to school on Tuesday.
But Abdullah challenged the army’s account, saying he would not have been freed so swiftly had he been carrying a bomb.
The military said the case was further evidence of the cynical exploitation of young people for attacks after the twin suicide bombings by two 17-year-old school pupils in Ashdod on Sunday, killing 10 Israelis.
On Tuesday evening an Israeli helicopter missile strike on a building and two cars in Gaza City killed two Islamic Jihad fighters and the army was grouping armour on the edge of Gaza hours after the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, ordered what was described as a more severe and prolonged response than usual to the bombings.
More than a dozen people were wounded in the missile strike, including a two-year-old girl, who was in a critical condition.
Defence officials told a meeting of Israel’s security cabinet that Hamas and Islamic Jihad had stepped up their attacks because of the Prime Minister’s plan to shut Jewish settlements in the Gaza strip. Hamas has declared the pullout a victory for its armed struggle.
The retaliation is expected to involve attempts to kill militant leaders after the security cabinet issued a warning that no one has immunity from ”targeted assassinations”.
The defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, cut short a visit to the US and ordered the Israeli army to ”step up the offensive against Hamas”.
The attack on Ashdod appears to have unnerved the Israelis because the bombers’ primary targets were not people but fuel and chemical storage tanks in the city’s port.
The military said Abdullah Quran, whose face adorned the front of Israeli newspapers yesterday, had been stopped amid intelligence warnings that a suicide bomber was attempting to leave Nablus.
When not in school, the boy works for about £3 a day as a porter carrying bags on a trolley through the checkpoint.
The army said Abdullah had told interrogators that a man had paid him to carry a rucksack to a woman on the other side of the barrier, but it had aroused suspicion because it looked unusually heavy.
The military said that once the explosive was discovered someone had tried to detonate it by dialling a mobile phone rigged to set off the bomb. The army accused the military wing of Fatah, the Tanzim, of planting the explosives.
”Two Tanzim terrorists based in Nablus exploited the boy’s innocent appearance and used him, without his knowledge, to attempt to pass explosive devices through the checkpoint,” the army said.
But Abdullah told the Associated Press that he believed the army had fabricated the account.
”These people are liars. I don’t believe them, and if it was a bomb, they would not have let me go so easily,” he said.
Abdullah said he had met two men in a car who gave him a bag containing car parts and clothes.
”They gave us a small travel bag, a plastic bag, and a bottle of water,” he said.
”They told us that on the other side of the checkpoint, there is a woman waiting. She will be in a Subaru, and she will come and take the stuff from us.”
But the boy conceded that he had been paid the equivalent of a day’s earnings to carry the bag.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a Tanzim faction blamed by the army, denied attempting to use him as a human bomb, claiming it had enough adult volunteers for suicide attacks.
The Israeli government says that since the beginning of the latest intifada in September 2000, youths under 18 have been responsible for 29 suicide attacks. – Guardian Unlimited Â