Hamas says it was behind suicide blast in Israel

The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas yesterday signalled a return to suicide bombing for the first time in more than three years inside Israel when it claimed responsibility for an attack in the town of Dimona on Monday.

Hamas named the two bombers as militants from Hebron, in the occupied West Bank. Abu Obeida, a recognised Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said the attack was intended to "bring a nightmare" to Dimona. The blast on Monday killed an Israeli woman and injured 11 others, including her husband.

Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, also strongly hinted yesterday that the attackers were from Hebron. In a speech to cadets at a military base, Barak said Israel "will find a solution to the terror from Hebron". If the claim is correct the Dimona attack would be the first Hamas suicide bombing inside Israel since two buses were blown up in Beersheba in August 2004 and may herald a new wave of intense conflict in the Middle East.

The announcement leaves unanswered questions about the fate of two young men from Gaza whom militant factions named as the bombers just hours after the Dimona attack. The two Gazans, from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, had made videos announcing their intention to carry out a suicide attack and were at first presumed, even by their mourning families, to have carried out the Dimona bombing. It was not clear last night whether they were still at large and intending to carry out an attack.

Israeli police were on heightened alert, with more officers deployed at shopping centres and bus and train stations across the country. However, police said there were no new specific security threats. Border police arrested 240 Palestinians overnight who had entered Israel illegally to work.

In Monday's attack a Palestinian bomber blew himself up at the entrance to a shopping centre in Dimona, in southern Israel. A second militant wearing an explosive belt was injured in the blast and was shot dead by a policeman before he could detonate his bomb. Yesterday the Hamas al-Aqsa television channel named the bombers as Mohammed Herbawi and Shadi Zghayer.