Suicide Attackers Hit Southern Israel

A suicide bomber blew himself up Monday in the southern town that houses Israel's secretive nuclear reactor, killing at least one Israeli and wounding six, authorities said. Police said a second attacker was shot dead before he could detonate his explosives belt.

A violent offshoot of moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement claimed responsibility, which could complicate recently renewed peace efforts.

Abu Fouad, a spokesman for the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, said the operation had been planned for a month, but was made possible after militants violently opened Gaza's border with Egypt on Jan. 23.

It was the first suicide attack in Israel in a year, and CBS News correspondent Robert Berger reports officials were quick to express suspicion that the attackers had come in through Egypt even before the claim by Fouad.

Israel had been on high alert since the border breach, fearing militants from Gaza, which is ruled by Hamas, would sneak into Israel through Egypt's porous border. During the breach, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians moved freely between Gaza and Egypt's Sinai desert. Egypt managed to reseal the border only on Sunday.

Abu Fouad said the group initially said the attackers were from the West Bank as a diversionary tactic. At the time, he said they didn't know if the second attacker was still alive, so they wanted to confuse the Israelis.

Once they confirmed he was dead, they announced that they were from Gaza.

Israeli officials dismissed the notion that the heavily guarded Dimona nuclear reactor was the target of the attackers. The explosion took place in an industrial area about six miles from the reactor site.

"We heard a large explosion and people started to run. I saw pieces of flesh flying in the air," a witness identified only by her first name, Revital, told Army Radio.

Ambulances and a large contingent of soldiers, rescue workers and police rushed to the scene, a shopping center in the small, working class town. The dead Israeli woman was not identified.

"The terror organizations have showed again who they are and what they are," said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel. "Their goal was and continues to be to kill Israeli citizens in their homes and their schools and in their shopping centers."

"Israel will continue to fight against this murderous terror as it is its duty and responsibility to secure the safety and security of Israel," he added.

At Sunday's Cabinet meeting, the heads of security services warned that because of the anarchy on the Gaza-Egypt frontier, Palestinian militants might enter Israel through Gaza's Sinai desert to attack a civilian Israeli target, a government official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the Cabinet meeting was closed.

Southern Israel has been on alert against militant attacks since the Gaza Strip's Islamic Hamas rulers breached the border with Egypt on Jan. 23. Egypt managed to reseal the border only on Sunday.

The breach made Israel's Negev desert, where Dimona is located, more vulnerable to penetration by Palestinian militants who could enter through Egypt's porous border. Dimona is about 40 miles northeast of Egypt.

However, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, the group affiliated with Abbas' Fatah movement that claimed responsibility, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that it sent attackers from the West Bank town of Ramallah to carry out the "heroic martyrdom bombing in Dimona."

Although Israel has in the past talked peace with the Palestinians in the shadow of suicide attacks, this latest bombing comes at a critical juncture.

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators relaunched peace talks after a seven-year break just two months ago, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has made it clear Israel won't implement any accord until militant groups in the West Bank and Hamas-ruled Gaza are dismantled.

Mahmoud Habbash, a minister in Abbas' government, condemned the attack, but blamed Israel for creating an atmosphere of violence with its ongoing attacks against militants in Gaza.

"We are against anything that would take us back to a cycle of violence," he said.

In the southern Gaza town of Rafah, gunmen fired their weapons into the air to celebrate the attack.

Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha said he did not know whether his group was involved, but praised the attack. He also rejected suggestions that the bombing would hurt Hamas' chances of reopening the border with Egypt.

"The suicide bombings were there before the closures and the resistance used every opportunity to make these glorious acts," he said. "They show the Palestinians can respond to the enemy and their crimes."

The last suicide bombing in Israel occurred on Jan. 29, 2007, when a Palestinian attacker killed three Israelis at a bakery in the southern Israeli city of Eilat. That suicide bomber entered Israel via Egypt.

Before that blast, there had been no suicide bombings in Israel for nine months.

After the breakdown of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in 2000, Palestinian militants carried out dozens of suicide bombings that killed hundreds of people.

Last November, peace negotiations were resumed between Israel and the West-Bank-based government of Abbas, though Israel says it continues to foil repeated attempted attacks by militants.

Dimona is home to Israel's nuclear research center, and it is widely believed that atomic weapons were developed at the plant. Israel neither admits nor denies having nuclear arms, following a policy of ambiguity designed to keep its neighbors unsure of its military capability.

Much of the evidence that it has nuclear weapons is based on details and pictures leaked in 1986 by Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu, who worked at the Dimona reactor.