Bombers include first known suicide couple
(AP)
Updated: 2005-11-12 09:35

A married couple involved in the deadly attacks on hotels in Jordan is the first known husband-and-wife team to take part in a suicide bombing, though relatives of Palestinian bombers have helped plan attacks, an Israeli counter-terror expert said Friday.

Al-Qaida in Iraq said four Iraqis, including a husband and wife, carried out the suicide bombings against three Amman hotels Wednesday, which killed 57 people in addition to the bombers.

Boaz Ganor, head of a private Israeli think-tank, The International Policy Institute for Counter Terrorism, said a married couple would be unique in the annals of suicide bombing.

"There's never been one that I can think of," he told The Associated Press.

Suicide bombers in Israel do not work alone: They are often preceded by a scout who reconnoiters targets and a courier who carries the actual explosive charge around roadblocks to a rendezvous point. The bomber is usually brought to the target by a driver, who also ensures that the attacker does not lose his or her nerve at the last moment.

Some accomplices are thought to have been relatives or spouses of the attacker.

At the Erez crossing between Gaza and Israel in January 2004, Reem Rayishi, a 22-year-old mother of two, blew herself up, killing three Israeli soldiers and a security guard. Her husband, Mohammed, claimed immediately after the attack that he had driven her to Erez and that he was proud of her.

The militant group Hamas, however, said recently that Rayishi was actually driven by a top Hamas operative killed in an Israeli airstrike a few weeks ago.

In March 2002, Gaza resident Miram Farhat appeared in a farewell video with her son, just before he was killed in a shooting and grenade attack on a Jewish settlement that killed five Israeli teens. "I wish I had 100 boys like Mohammed. I'd sacrifice them for the sake of God," Farhat says in the video.

Last month Israeli security officials said they had arrested a West Bank woman, Samar Sabih, who had been trained by Hamas as the first female bombmaker and had been teaching her husband. The husband also has been picked up by the Israelis.

There were strong family ties among three militants who died in Egypt in April. Police were chasing Ehab Yousri Yassin, a suspect in a bomb attack on a Cairo street market, when he blew himself up. A short time later, Yassin's sister and fiancee fired on a tourist bus, wounding two people, then shot themselves dead.

Ganor also noted Chechnya's "black widows," or female bombers who turn to violence after losing husbands or male relatives in the Chechen fighting.

"There also you have the link of carrying out an action as a result of the marriage connection," he said.