Soldiers catch boy suicide bomber

A PALESTINIAN teenager approached a crowded West Bank checkpoint wearing a suicide bomb vest yesterday in what Israel said was an attempt to kill soldiers.

Troops leapt behind concrete barricades and sent a robot to hand scissors to 16-year-old Hussam Abdo so he could cut off the vest. They then ordered him to strip to his underwear before detonating the bomb.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the incident. The boy’s family said he had a mental disability: “He doesn’t know anything, and he has intelligence of a 12-year-old,” his brother, Hosni, said.

The incident was the latest in a series of what Israel says are foiled militant attacks involving young Palestinians. “No matter how many times Israel learns of the use of children for suicide bombings, it is shocking on each occasion,” said Dore Gold, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. “Israelis do not understand how Palestinians are willing to sacrifice their own children in order to kill ours.”

Soldiers at the Hawara checkpoint outside Nablus said they got intelligence an attack was imminent, shut down the crossing and began searching people there.

Abdo, wearing an oversized red jersey, approached them in a suspicious way, said Lt Tamir Milrad.

“We saw that he had something under his shirt,” he said. The soldiers dove behind concrete barricades, pointed their guns at him and told him to stop.

“He told us he didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to blow up,” he said.