JERUSALEM, June 20: Israeli soldiers arrested a would-be Palestinian suicide bomber on Monday as she tried to enter Israel through Gaza’s Erez border crossing with explosives, the army said. Wafa al Bass, a 21-year-old burns victim with scarring visible on her arms and neck, had permission to travel to the Israeli city of Beersheba for medical treatment a day before Tuesday’s Jerusalem summit between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Israeli soldiers said they found about 10kgs of explosives strapped under her clothes.

“She was a suicide bomber, a young, scarred woman ... who had undergone treatment in (Israel) in the past,” Colonel Avy Levy, head of Israel’s northern Gaza brigade, told Israel Radio.

“Terrorist groups wanted to take advantage of her condition and use her to carry out an attack in Israel,” he said. “She thought because she was ill, we wouldn’t check her.”

Israeli security sources alleged that Ms Bass, of Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza, had been ordered by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades to blow herself up in a Beersheba hospital. The brigades, part of the ruling Fatah party, declined to comment.

Ms Bass told Israeli television in a jailhouse interview that she was angry over allegations that Israeli guards at the Megiddo prison in northern Israel had ripped pages off a copy of the Holy Quran.

“What angered me and the Palestinian people is the abuse of the Quran,” Ms Bass said. “Should we sit in silence with our hands tied?”

Challenged by soldiers who noticed her acting suspiciously, Ms Bass tried to reach for a detonator but they grabbed her before she could press the button, the army said.

The Palestinian woman wept as she explained why she had tried to detonate the bomb after being noticed by the Israeli guards: “I knew I would be tortured in jail for the rest of my life.” —Reuters