Aayat al-Akhras, 18, yesterday became the third and youngest female suicide bomber of the Palestinian intifada. She blew herself up, killing two Israelis, in a supermarket in suburban West Jerusalem.
Her "martyrdom" came within 48 hours of a suicide bombing in the seaside town of Netanya that left 22 dead and more than 100 wounded, the worst Palestinian atrocity in Israel in 18 months of fighting.
It gave chilling testimony to an even bleaker future prophesied yesterday by the speaker of the Palestinian parliament, Ahmed Korai: "Israel is pushing us more and more. If it continues, there will be a million suicide bombers." Akhras approached the Supersol supermarket on a wet, windy afternoon in West Jerusalem's Kiryat Yoval district, crowded with shoppers stocking up for the sabbath and the Passover holiday. Witnesses said there was nothing unusual about her appearance. Her western dress and European looks melded seamlessly into a middle class neighbourhood.
Suspicions were aroused by her behaviour and the heavy bag slung over her shoulder. She passed one guard at the supermarket before being confronted by another. She detonated her bomb, killing herself and two Israelis, a man and a woman. Twenty people were wounded, two seriously.
"The blast was huge. She was just a few metres from the entrance inside," a witness said.
A police spokesman, Gil Kleiman, said she set off her explosives as the security guard attempted to keep her out of the store. The guard's efforts "saved a large number of lives," he said.
Hanna Cohen, who spoke to Israel Radio, said she was about to enter the store when there was "a huge blast and I saw people flying all around, arms and legs".
Avraham Ben-Yakov, a 38-year-old doctor, remembered telling the security guard as he entered that he was doing a good, important job. A few steps behind the doctor, the bomber approached the guard.
"I saw a very intense explosion with dark smoke," Dr Ben-Yakov said. "People started running, crying." He rushed to help the wounded and found the young security guard barely breathing, both of his legs severed. "He lost all of the blood," he said.
Police said the bomber was carrying parts of mortar shells that had yet to explode. "It was a partial explosion. Had she gone up fully, we would have an even worse carnage here," Mr Kleiman said.
Akhras was claimed as a "martyr" by the al-Aqsa Brigades, linked to Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
They have reportedly set up a special unit for female suicide bombers. "We have 200 young women from the Bethlehem area alone ready to sacrifice themselves for the homeland," an al-Aqsa leader in Bethlehem said last week. The bombing occurred after fights between Palestinian youths and Israeli police broke out at the al-Aqsa mosque compound, a contested site in occupied East Jerusalem that is holy to Muslims and Jews. After Friday prayers, Palestinians threw rocks at Jews worshipping at the Western Wall. Israeli police stormed the compound, using stun grenades to disperse Palestinian worshippers. One Israeli police officer was injured and a Palestinian was arrested.
A sudden deluge of rain and sleet doused tempers. But it was a reminder that the more Israel raises the heat on Mr Arafat in Ramallah the more the flames are likely to ignite Jerusalem, the most incendiary core of the Arab- Israeli conflict.
Akhras lived in Bethlehem's Dehaisha camp, home to 10,000 Palestinian refugees. The Associated Press reported last night that as word of the bombing spread through the camp, some residents cele brated, handing out sweets and firing guns into the air.
Akhras was engaged, according to a source in the camp. But instead of marriage she chose to follow in the footsteps of Wafa Idriss, a woman bomber who killed herself and an Israeli in West Jerusalem in January, and Daria Abu Aysha, an English literature student from a village near Nablus who killed herself and wounded three soldiers at a West Bank checkpoint in February.
Palestinians in Dehaisha expressed "astonishment" at her death. But a glance at her history revealed motives for vengeance.
Born into a family made refugees by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, she had witnessed one cousin killed by Israeli soldiers in the first Palestinian intifada, a second left permanently disabled and a third wounded.
Amjad, a friend of the Akhras family, speculated that the incident that had helped to turn Aayat into a killer was Israel's invasion of Dehaisha earlier this month. Three Palestinians were killed, hundreds were arrested and women and children were held captive by Israeli soldiers in their homes.
"It bred in us all feelings of despair and revenge," he said. "And that is what a suicide bomber is: a mixture of despair and resistance. You don't have to be a man to feel that. You don't have to be a woman. You can be a boy - or a girl." -- Yoshie
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