Associated Press

Israeli security and investigators examine the wreckage of a car damaged by a bomb on a road leading to Kibbutz Shluhot, five miles north of the West Bank. A bomb exploded yesterday next to a car in an apparent suicide attack, killing an Israeli and a Palestinian suspected of carrying out the bombing.

Monday October 8, 2001

JERUSALEM - A Palestinian bomber blew himself up and killed one Israeli yesterday, marking the first suicide attack in nearly a month and dealing another blow to a tattered truce.

Also, a Palestinian was shot dead and three were injured in the volatile West Bank city of Hebron. Palestinians blamed Israeli troops, while Israel said it was part of an internal Palestinian dispute. Israeli troops entered two Palestinian neighborhoods in the city on Friday and have remained for the past three days.

Neither Israel nor the Palestinians want to be seen as abandoning the cease-fire, but the violence has not abated since the truce was declared Sept. 26. More than 30 Palestinians and seven Israelis have been killed since the truce.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Cabinet issued a sharply worded statement Friday telling Palestinian militants that attacks on Israel were undermining the truce and worked against Palestinian interests.

Also, Palestinian security forces said they have detained at least six suspected militants in recent days. Those taken into custody include two activists from the Islamic Jihad movement, detained yesterday in the wake of the suicide bombing.

However, Israel has named more than 100 suspects it wants arrested, and the actions by the security forces have not halted the attacks.

In northern Israel, a Palestinian bomber approached the Israeli agricultural settlement of Kibbutz Shluhot on foot. When an Israeli in a car drove up to confront the Palestinian, he detonated his bomb, killing them both, said Israeli police spokesman Gil Kleiman.

Palestinian security sources said the bomber was a 17-year-old high-school student, Ahmed Daraghmeh, and a member of Islamic Jihad.

Islamic Jihad did not comment on the attack. However, it and the Hamas movement have carried out more than 20 suicide bombings during the past year of Mideast fighting.

With Arafat urging Palestinians to cease fire, there had been some speculation that militant groups might halt suicide bombings inside Israel, at least temporarily. But yesterday's attack - the first suicide bombing since Sept. 9

- showed that such attacks have not been abandoned.

Meanwhile, Israeli tanks and troops maintained their hold on two Palestinian neighborhoods in Hebron for the third day in a row yesterday, making it the longest Israeli presence in Palestinian territory since Israel started handing over parts of the West Bank and Gaza in 1994 under interim peace accords.

Israeli forces moved into the hilltop neighborhoods early Friday, after Palestinians fired on crowds of Israeli visitors marking a Jewish holiday in Hebron.

Yesterday, there were sporadic exchanges of gunfire, witnesses said. At one point, four Palestinians traveling in a taxi came under gunfire, leaving one dead and three wounded.

Palestinians said Israeli troops did the shooting, but Israel's military said it was part of a feud among Palestinians.

Meanwhile, south of Hebron, two Israeli Cabinet ministers, greeted by some 3,000 Jewish settlers, announced plans to build a new Jewish neighborhood outside the existing settlement of Beit Haggai.

The expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is an incendiary issue, bitterly opposed by Palestinians. The two ministers, Public Security Minister Uzi Landau and Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi, were cheered by the settlers.

More than 200,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and Gaza, areas the Palestinians are demanding for a future state.

Also, Israel said yesterday its security forces arrested Suleiman Ahmed Rizek, from the Palestinian village of Hizma, near Jerusalem, suspected of planning "terror activity in Israel" for the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militia.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office issued a statement that said Rizek received money and orders to gather intelligence about Jewish settlements near his home. Hezbollah denied the charge in a statement from Beirut, Lebanon.