PLO Plot foiled to use AIDS-tainted blood in terror attack [on Passover to murder Jews]

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/414794.html

PLO Plot foiled to use AIDS-tainted blood in terror attack [on Passover to murder Jews]
Haaretz ^ | 4/13/2004 | Amos Harel

An attack using AIDS-infected blood was among several planned suicide attempts, two by women, that security forces thwarted over the Passover holiday, which ended Monday night.

One of two Tanzim activists caught at the end of March told interrogators the group that sent them had planned a series of other attacks, including one with a device to which blood infected with AIDS would be attached.

Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security sources, however, agree that the plan had not reached a practical stage. Another planned attack was a triple suicide bombing by terror organizations in the Gaza Strip.

Sa'id Salah, 19, of Jebalyah refugee camp, was arrested at the barrier to the Gush Katif settlement bloc in the Gaza Strip on April 5. He told interrogators he was supposed to be one of three suicide bombers, who were to blow themselves up simultaneously in one of the large cities.

Their operators were also planning to kidnap a settler near the West Bank settlement of Kedumim.

The suicide bombers, whose explosive belts were ready, were to have gone from the Gaza Strip to Egypt by tunnel and then enter Israel through Sinai.

The three - from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah - planned to wear IDF uniforms for the bombing.

Activists arrested

The same day two Islamic Jihad activists, who had planned a combined shooting and grenade attack in Tel Aviv or Be'er Sheva, were arrested at the Rafah border crossing in the Gaza Strip.

Two Palestinians from the West Bank city of Nablus, one aged 16, who were sent to carry out a suicide attack in an Israeli restaurant, were also arrested earlier this month. The two were dispatched by Fatah and Islamic Jihad.

At the end of March, a resident of the Balata refugee camp in Nablus was arrested on suspicion of planning a Fatah suicide attack in Tel Aviv. The 25-year old woman, who apparently was discovered cheating on her husband, was ordered to carry out the bombing for family honor.

Another woman, 19, of Nablus, was arrested a few days later. She had been ordered to carry out a suicide bombing, after her family discovered she had been romantically involved before her marriage.

Ten others whose names appeared on wanted lists were arrested in Nablus and the surrounding area, suspected of trying to set up suicide bombings.

They included three would-be suicide bombers and the head of the cell is Isma'il Haraz, whom security sources say got orders from the Hezbollah guerrilla group in Lebanon.