The military wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement claimed responsibility on Monday for a suicide bombing which ripped through a shopping mall in southern Israel town of Dimona.
Palestinian news agency of Maan reported that a spokesman for al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades of Fatah confirmed during a phone interview with Maan that his group was behind the blast, which killed at least four Israelis and wounded 16 others, six of them in critical condition.
According to the spokesman, the first suicide attack on Israeli soil in more than a year was carried out in cooperation with the military wings of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP).
A second suicide bomber was reportedly killed by Israeli police officers before he blew himself up in the mall.
The spokesman also said the attackers were Gazans "who crossed from the liberated territories (Gaza) into the occupied territories of Palestine (Israel)."
Meanwhile, Israeli sources believed that the assailants have succeeded in infiltrating southern Israel from Sinai when Hamas militants blew up Gaza-Egypt border on Jan. 23 and allowed floods of Palestinians into Egypt's Sinai Peninsular.
Stressing that the suicide bombers entered Israel from Gaza, the spokesman said the Israeli claims that they crossed from Sinaiwas meant at "exporting Israel's crisis to Egypt."
On Jan. 29, 2006, Islamic Jihad movement carried out the latest suicide bombing in Eilat town, leaving three Israelis dead.
Egyptian forces on Sunday resealed the only remaining gap on the Egyptian side of the border fences with barbed wire and metal barricades, ending the nearly two-week-long border breaches crisis.
Source:Xinhua
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