At least two Israeli soldiers were wounded on Tuesday when a bicycling Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up in the north of the West Bank, Israeli military sources said.
The attack, which was claimed by the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, took place between the town of Qalqilya and the nearby village of Habla, which are linked by a tunnel.
The attacker set off the charge he was carrying near an army jeep as it was passing through a gap in Israel’s separation barrier which enables Palestinians to gain access to their fields.
The cyclist had been asked by soldiers to identify himself. He then dismounted, ran towards the soldiers and blew himself up, the sources and witnesses said.
Palestinian security sources said that two Palestinians were also wounded in the attack.
In a phone call to AFP’s offices in the main northern West Bank city of Nablus, an anonymous caller said the attack had been carried out by Yussef Taleb Ighbariyeh (26) who comes from Qalqilya.
Three members of the al-Aqsa Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, were killed on Monday in an Israeli helicopter strike on a car in the flashpoint northern West Bank town of Jenin.
The caller said that the attack was ”a first response” to Monday’s air strike, which local Brigades leader Zakaria Zubeidi had promised would be avenged within 24 hours.
Zubeidi’s chief lieutenant, 28-year-old Mahmud Khalifa, was among the three Brigades members who were killed instantly when a missile slammed into their vehicle in the center of Jenin.
Shortly after the Qalqilya attack, an Israeli army staged an incursion into the nearby Nur Chams refugee camp where they imposed a curfew. Loud explosions could be heard in the camp, witnesses said.
Israeli sources meanwhile said that a dozen wanted Palestinians had been detained overnight throughout the West Bank.
And in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, Palestinian sources said that the army destroyed two houses which had been home to 46 people in an early morning offensive. – Sapa-AFP