Female suicide bomber in Gaza attacks Israeli troops

An 18-year-old Palestinian woman strode defiantly toward an Israeli army checkpoint and blew herself up Monday, slightly wounding a soldier in the latest act of resistance among women to the occupation of the Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun.

Two other Palestinian teenagers died and nine were wounded in nearby Beit Lahiya when a missile that Israel said was aimed at fighters handling a rocket launcher struck near a school bus instead, police and witnesses in the town said.

Four Palestinian fighters were reported killed elsewhere, bringing the death toll in Israel’s 6-day-old operation in northern Gaza to 55 -- 40 Palestinian combatants, 14 civilians and one Israeli soldier. The offensive is aimed at rooting out squads that fire crude Kassam rockets daily into Israel from the northern part of this coastal territory.

Relatives of the suicide bomber identified her as Mervat Masaoud, a student at the Islamic University of Gaza. The Israeli army said she detonated an explosives belt after troops at the checkpoint in Beit Hanoun became suspicious and ordered her to halt.

The militant group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack and released a videotape of the tall, thin teenager clutching a Koran and an M-16 rifle while smiling and stating calmly her intention to die fighting Israel. Asking forgiveness of her parents, she said, “I love you very much, but I love Palestine and God more.”

Interviewed later on Palestinian television, the parents appeared shocked and grief-stricken, yet uttered words of approval of the suicide mission. The weeping mother collapsed twice on camera.

Relatives said one of the young woman’s cousins had blown himself up, along with another bomber, in a 2004 attack in the Israeli port of Ashdod that killed 10 port workers.

Monday’s assault was the first suicide bombing to target Israelis since a blast in April killed nine people in Tel Aviv.

Only a few of the more than 100 Palestinian suicide bombers in the last six years have been women. The latest attack came three days after an even more unusual battle-zone intervention by about 200 women in Beit Hanoun, who swarmed through an Israeli cordon and shielded dozens of fighters so they could escape from an encircled mosque. Two of the women were killed by Israeli gunfire.

Israel has come under growing international criticism for the operation because of the loss of civilian life. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday that the offensive would continue until rockets stop falling on Israel, or at least taper off. Troops pulled out of Beit Hanoun early today but remained inside the strip. Israeli officials have said the northern Gaza incursion will last several more days.

Army officials say the offensive has hit seven rocket squads and pushed others southward in Gaza, farther from the targeted populated areas of southern Israel. The soldiers have seized stockpiles of rockets, explosive charges and other weaponry.

The army has been making periodic sweeps into Gaza since the capture in June of an Israeli soldier who is reported to be in the custody of armed groups including Hamas, the Islamic movement that governs the Palestinian Authority.

Hamas’ election victory in January provoked a cutoff of Western aid to the Palestinian territories because of the militant movement’s refusal to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept previous Israeli-Palestinian pacts. Hamas and its chief rival, the more moderate Fatah party, have been holding talks for months on forming a new government that would be palatable to the West.

Officials of Fatah, the secular nationalist movement that was ousted in the election but whose leader still holds the presidency, said Monday that they and Hamas were close to agreement on a proposed “national unity” government. The prospective accord calls for a Cabinet of technocrats not directly linked to any party and led by a new prime minister nominated by Hamas.

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boudreaux@latimes.com

Times staff writer Boudreaux reported from Jerusalem and special correspondent Abu Alouf from Gaza City.