Hamas Asserts Role in Suicide Bombing

Israel Strikes in Gaza a Day After Fatal Attack Within Its Borders; 9 Palestinians Killed

JERUSALEM, Feb. 5 -- Israeli air and ground attacks in the Gaza Strip killed nine Hamas fighters Tuesday as the armed Palestinian movement asserted responsibility for a suicide bombing that had killed an Israeli woman a day earlier.

If proved to be the work of Hamas, Monday's suicide bombing in the southern Israeli town of Dimona would be the militant group's first within Israel since 2004.

Hamas said the two Palestinians who carried out the attack were from the West Bank city of Hebron. Many Israelis speculated Monday that the bomber and an accomplice had left Gaza after Palestinians last month demolished much of the border wall that divides the territory from Egypt, allowing hundreds of thousands of Gazans to exit and reenter the strip unhindered.

Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since June, does not recognize the state of Israel and is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel. Suicide bombers affiliated with the group killed hundreds of Israelis from the mid-1990s until Hamas announced a 2005 cease-fire.

Israeli police said Tuesday they were not ready to say who carried out Monday's suicide bombing. After one bomber detonated his explosives, killing a woman later identified as Lyubov Razdolskaya, 73, who worked in the physics department of Ben Gurion University, police shot dead an accomplice before he could trigger his suicide belt.

"There's still an investigation into who they are and where they came from," Israeli police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak was less circumspect. He said the country would find means to end "terror from Hebron and Qassams from Gaza," referring to crude rockets that Palestinian groups fire into southern Israel.

Abu Obeida, a spokesman for the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, an armed group within Hamas, said it had carried out the bombing, and he named two men from Hebron as the perpetrators of the attack.

"We delayed announcing for 30 hours, for security reasons and to let the Israelis wonder," Abu Obeida said. Hamas's assertions of responsibility are usually borne out in later investigations.

Hamas also renewed warnings that more suicide attacks could follow inside Israel. "If Israelis continue their shelling and shelling and escalation . . . we believe that all shapes of resistance must be continued," said spokesman Fawzi Barhoum.

At least four Palestinian militant groups have asserted responsibility for Monday's suicide bombing. On Monday, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of the Fatah political movement, identified two young Gazans it said had carried out the attack. The men's families confirmed that the two were missing. A spokesman for the Brigades, Abu Walid, stood by his group's assertion late Tuesday.

Israeli newspapers said the competing claims could indicate that more than one group has sent fighters to attack in Israel.