$34 - the price paid for a teenage martyr

By DONALD MacINTYRE

HAWARA - The Israeli Army produced for the television cameras yesterday a teenage boy and accused militants of turning him into a "human bomb" by sending him across a checkpoint in an explosive vest.

The boy, who said he was 14, was ordered to stop at gunpoint as he moved towards a group of Israeli soldiers.

Instead of running on and detonating the vest, he stopped and raised his hands.

In an escalation of the Army's campaign to publicise what it says is the increasing use of children by anti-Israeli militants, reporters were invited to film the boy within hours of his detention and before he was interrogated.

They were not allowed to interview the boy, named as Hussam Abdu, although in answer to questions shouted in Arabic by a television crew he said he was 14 and in the eighth grade.

He nodded when asked if he knew what he had been carrying.

The explosives which the Army said had been in the vest were detonated nearby.

Military sources said the boy told them he received 100 shekels - equivalent to $34 - for the attack.

He was filmed looking frightened and wearing an oversized Army jacket loaned to him by a soldier over his blue jeans.

Originally the Army said he was as young as 10, but his family in Nablus told a reporter he was 16.

A spokesman for the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade - the militant faction linked to Yasser Arafat's Fatah - also said the boy was 16.

Abed Khabesa, a Palestinian cameraman who filmed the episode, said yesterday that he was driving from Hawara at around 1.30pm and was between the two checkpoints before the entry to Nablus when he noticed that no one was passing through the second checkpoint.

An Israeli official he knew well told him that a suicide bomber had been detained on the approach from the Nablus side of the second checkpoint. "The boy was about 30 metres from the second checkpoint," he said.

"He had his hands on his head. He was wearing a red jacket which he took off. Some Druze soldiers who spoke Arabic were hiding behind the concrete blocks at the checkpoint and shouting at him what to do.

"He took off his jacket and I saw that he was wearing a sort of grey vest. I could see him taking off one side of the vest and then the other. The vest slipped down to the ground."

Mr Khabesa said the soldiers also ordered the boy to lower his trousers and then hitch them up again. They warned him to keep away from the vest.

An Army spokesman said the boy had been running towards the soldiers, apparently after troops noticed something abnormal about his clothing as he stood in the queue to the checkpoint.

The soldiers were on high alert after an incident exactly a week ago when soldiers at the same checkpoint caught a 10-year-old boy who they said had been carrying a bomb in one of two plastic bags he was carrying.

Local reports said a cell of the Tanzim terrorist group from the Balata refugee camp in Nablus had taken responsibility for the boy's abortive attack.

Army Radio reported that the belt did not detonate because of a technical fault, but Channel 1 television later said that Israeli sappers had discovered no problem with the explosives and had speculated that the boy had lost his nerve.

The boy's family said he was mentally slow.

"He doesn't know anything," said his brother Hosni.

Soldiers said they had heard that an attack was planned at the checkpoint.

They closed the crossing and began searching people.

The boy, wearing an oversized red jersey, approached them in a suspicious way, said Lieutenant Tamir Milrad, an officer at the checkpoint.

They ordered him to take off his jersey, revealing a large grey bomb vest underneath.

"He told us he didn't want to die. He didn't want to blow up," Lieutenant Milrad said.

The boy cut off the vest after the soldiers used a small robot to send him scissors.

"This is another horrific example of how the Palestinians use their own children to spread terror against Israelis," said David Baker, an official in the Prime Minister's office.

Abdu's mother voiced astonishment at the incident.

"Hussam left home this morning to school, and this was the first we hear of what happened," Tamam Abdu said.

"This is shocking. To use a child like this is irresponsible, forbidden."

- INDEPENDENT