15 January 2004	Thursday	22 Ziqa'ad 1424

GAZA, Jan 14: Palestinian mother of two who killed four Israelis in a suicide bombing on Wednesday professed love for her children before launching an attack that she said was meant to turn her body into "deadly shrapnel".

Smiling at times in a videotape that showed her cradling a rifle, 22-year-old Reem Al Reyashi said she had dreamed since she was 13 of becoming a martyr and dying for her people.

Reem Reyashi, from a middle-class merchant family, blew herself up at the main border crossing between Israel and Gaza Strip in an attack claimed jointly by the Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

Ms Reyashi, a high school graduate active in Hamas women's groups, faked a limp when she set off a metal detector operated by Israeli security personnel at the Erez checkpoint.

While a female soldier was being called to search her, Reyashi entered the building and blew herself up. "It was always my wish to turn my body into deadly shrapnel against the Zionists and to knock on the doors of heaven with the skulls of Zionists," Ms Reyashi, wearing combat fatigues with a Hamas sash across her chest, said in the video.

Farewell videos are traditionally left by suicide bombers. Outside her home in a Gaza City neighbourhood known to be a Hamas stronghold, the suicide bomber's husband of five years sat crying. A relative said the family had not known of Reyashi's plans.-Reuters