Tel Aviv, 11 Oct. (AKI) - The Israeli military has detained a Gaza Strip woman suspected of being the first female bomb-maker employed by the militant Palestinian group Hamas, an Israeli newspaper has reported. Samar Sabih, 22, was sent by Hamas' military wing in the Gaza Strip to the West Bank to train new explosive experts, Tel Aviv daily Haaretz said on Tuesday. Sabih was among a number of suspected militants in recent Israeli military raids, the report said.
Hamas in Gaza is believed to have taught Sabih, a resident of the Strip's Jabalyah refugee camp, how to make bombs. A few months ago she submitted a request to the Israeli authorities, asking them to let her live in the West Bank town of Tul Karm so that she could marry her fiancé, who lived there. Israeli authorities granted her request because she had no record of security breaches.
When Sabih arrived in Tul Karm, she married her fiancé and allegedly contacted Hamas activists from Ramallah. Israeli secret services sources cited by Haaretz said that one of her "student bombmakers" was Ali Kadi, one of the organisation's members who later took part in the abduction and murder of an Israeli man, Sasson Nuriel. Sabih also allegedly trained her husband to prepare explosives, so that he could replace her in training others if she were caught, the sources said. Sabih and her husband were both arrested some two weeks ago.
This is the first time, as far as Israeli intelligence sources know, that Hamas used a woman bomb maker. |