JERUSALEM - Israeli police shot dead a man who ran over a policeman last night after a day of high tension during which a Palestinian woman bomber killed one Israeli and wounded dozens on a Jerusalem street.
The man was suspected of bursting through a military roadblock from the West Bank into Israel.
Police, dismissing radio reports that the driver had opened fire on passersby, said he was not armed.
The incident on the edge of Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv, cranked up fears in Israel, on high alert after three Palestinian suicide attacks in cities in the country in the past week.
Earlier yesterday a Palestinian woman was killed when the bomb she was carrying exploded in a Jerusalem street.
It was the first attack by a female in Israel in the nine-year history of Palestinian suicide attacks.
Women have been involved in previous attacks, but never as suicides.
The woman, named by Hizbollah television as Shahanaz Al Amouri, a 20-year-old student from Al Najah University in Nablus, was blown to pieces when the device went off outside a shoe shop in Jaffa St. An 81-year-old Israeli man was killed.
One of the injured was Mark Sokolov, 43, a New York lawyer who survived the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
He was waiting at a Jerusalem shoe store to pick up a package from a cousin to take back to New York.
"I heard a loud 'whoosh' noise and then like a bang. And I kind of saw things flying around a little bit and then I realised I was able to get up and walk around.
"I am sure there are many parallels that I'll be able to figure out ... I don't know. I was obviously a lot luckier last time. This one involved my whole family," he said.
His wife and daughters were also injured by the blast.
As a woman, the bomber would have raised fewer suspicions, even on Jaffa St, where 10 previous attacks have killed 96 Israelis.
The use of female bombers marked a dramatic tactical shift by Palestinian groups seeking to exploit the security forces' hesitation to search Muslim women.
While checks on Palestinian men at roadblocks and elsewhere are rigorous, they are much less so for women because of the acute sensitivities involved.
Some Israeli sources said the woman could have been a bomb-carrier rather than a suicide attacker.
But senior Army officials were working on the assumption that she was a suicide attacker. One said: "This is big trouble. We are already stretched and, if we are facing women as well as men, it will make it much more difficult for us."
The Palestinian Authority condemned the attack. On Sunday, President Yasser Arafat had called on his people to suspend attacks on Israel.
- REUTERS, - INDEPENDENT
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Woman suicide attack grim twist to bloody week
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