Palestinian woman sets off bomb near Israeli police checkpoint in West Bank: Police

Israel policemen run in a street in during clashes with Israeli Arabs in Nazareth at northern Israel, on Oct 10, 2015. PHOTO: REUTERS

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A Palestinian female motorist set off a bomb after being pulled over by Israeli police at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank on Sunday (Oct 11), wounding herself and lightly wounding an officer, police said.

"The driver shouted 'Allah Hu Akbar' (God is great) and detonated an explosive device," a police spokesman said.

Police initially said the woman had been killed, but amended this to say she had been wounded. Israel's Magen David Adom ambulance service said she was in critical condition. The police officer was lightly injured.

The incident followed a surge since last week in Palestinian attacks on Israelis, mostly with crude weapons like knives and rocks, and a crackdown by Israeli security forces. Four Israelis and 24 Palestinians have been killed in 11 days of violence.

Meanwhile, An Israeli air strike on a Hamas target in the Gaza Strip on Sunday brought down a nearby house killing a Palestinian woman and her daughter, hospital officials said.

The Israeli military said in a statement its air force had targeted two weapons sites belonging to Hamas, the Islamist militant group which controls Gaza, in response to the launching of two rockets into Israel on Saturday and Friday.

Witnesses said the powerful explosion at one of the Hamas camps in Gaza City caused a nearby house to collapse while its inhabitants were sleeping inside.

Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra said the woman killed was aged 30 and pregnant, her daughter was three. A five-year-old boy and a man were wounded, he added.

No group claimed responsibility for launching the rockets, one of which was intercepted near the southern Israeli town of Ashkelon. The other hit an open area, causing no casualties. The Israeli military said it held Hamas responsible for any attacks from Gaza.

In 12 days of bloodshed, four Israelis and 22 Palestinians, many of whom had carried out knife attacks, have been killed in Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank, Gaza and Israeli cities. This has raised concerns that a new Palestinian uprising may be brewing.

Palestinians have been angered by events at the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City and fear Israel wants to change the religious status quo at Islam's third holiest shrine, revered by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and by Jews as the Temple Mount. Israel has said it has no intention to do so.

The almost daily Palestinian knife attacks and clashes between Israeli soldiers and stone-throwing Palestinians are not at the levels of past Palestinian uprisings, but the rapid escalation has triggered talk of a third "intifada".

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