JERUSALEM (AFP) - Two Israelis, including a policeman, were killed and 16 other people wounded when a Palestinian woman suicide bomber blew herself up at a police checkpoint next to a group of bus stops in Jerusalem.
"A female suicide bomber approached a checkpoint protecting several bus stops and blew herself up," police spokesman Gil Kleiman told reporters Wednesday at the scene of the blast near the French Hill neighbourhood, in the Israeli-annexed eastern sector of the disputed holy city.
Kleiman said that the first victim, who had been manning the checkpoint, had died at the scene of the blast, while medical sources later said another person died in hospital.
The second victim's identity was not immediately known although medical sources had earlier reported that one of the casualties was a nine-year-old child.
An AFP correspondent reported seeing the severed head of the young female bomber who had been a wearing a beige-coloured headscarf. Her legs had been blown several yards (metres) away from the rest of her body.
Kleiman said that there had been a number of warnings about possible attacks in recent days. "This attack follows a higher warning level in the past two days although there was no specific information for these bus stops," he said.
"We are now checking the connections between the warnings and the suicide bombing."
A spokesman for the radical Palestinian group, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, claimed responsibility for the attack in a telephone call to AFP's offices in the West Bank town of Jenin.
He said on condition of anonymity that the attack was in retaliation for the recent killings by Israeli forces of a number of senior members of his group, which is an offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's mainstream Fatah movement.
Speaking at the United Nations, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told reporters: "It shows that the Palestinians wouldn't like to abandon this tool of terrorism against us.
"I think the world should be united in its combat against terrorism," he said shortly after meeting Secretary General Kofi Annan on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
"It's not a problem of Israel any more. Terrorism can hit anywhere," he said.
The attack was swiftly condemned by the Palestinian Authority, saying it opposed all attacks against civilians and warning that only an end to Israeli occupation could end the violence.
It condemns "all acts targeting Palestinian and Israeli civilians", negotiations minister Saeb Erakat told AFP. "An end to the violence can only take place with the end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands."
The latest deaths bring the overall toll since the start of the Palestinian intifada four years ago to 4,327, including 3,311 Palestinians and 945 Israelis, according to an AFP count.