DIMONA (Israel), Feb 4: A Palestinian suicide bomber killed a woman in a desert town in southern Israel on Monday, the first such attack in the country in a year, but Israeli officials said peace talks would not be derailed.

Police said they prevented a second blast in the shopping centre of Dimona by shooting dead an accomplice before he could detonate an explosives belt.

“It was like a war. People were running like crazy. I saw a piece of a human being right there, next to my leg,” witness Rosa Enberg told Israel’s Channel Two television.

Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor, widely believed to have produced atomic bombs, is located in a heavily guarded compound on the outskirts of the town.A Gaza-based source in President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction said the “Army of Palestine” wing of Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades launched the attack along with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

A Fatah official in the West Bank denied Al Aqsa involvement. The conflicting statements reflected divisions in Fatah as Abbas pursues US-backed peace talks with Israel, the first in seven years.

“Abu Mazen (Abbas) is a moderate who wants peace. We will continue to negotiate with him,” an Israeli official said.

Two other militant groups, Islamic Jihad and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, praised the bombing as a blow against “Israeli occupation” and retaliation for Israeli attacks.

Young supporters of Fatah handed out flowers and candy to passing cars in the southern Gaza city of Rafah to celebrate.

Abbas condemned the Dimona bombing but also criticised a military raid by Israel in the occupied West Bank.

Police said the suicide bomber blew himself up in Dimona’s busy commercial centre, killing himself and the Israeli woman, who was not immediately identified.

“The second terrorist was shot in the head as he tried to set off his bomb belt,” said Yossi Porianta, the police chief in Israel’s southern Negev region. The Magen David Adom ambulance service said 10 people were wounded.

Hours after the suicide bombing, an Israeli air strike in the Gaza Strip killed Amer Qarmout, a senior commander in the militant group called the Popular Resistance Committees, which carries out cross-border rocket attacks. The PRC vowed revenge.—Reuters