RAMALLAH, West Bank — Wafa Idris, the woman who set off a bomb that killed an elderly Israeli man and wounded more than a dozen in downtown Jerusalem this week, was a paramedic who was hit three times herself by Israeli rubber bullets, relatives said Wednesday.
Idris did not tell her family she was a member of any militant group. But the Al Aqsa Brigades, which is part of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, issued a leaflet saying she carried out the bombing in response to Israeli military actions, including the encirclement of Arafat, who has been confined to Ramallah for the past two months.
Mourning family members said they were surprised to hear she had become the first-ever female Palestinian suicide bomber in Israel — but then one sister recalled hearing her say she wanted to die "a martyr."
The 27-year-old Idris lived with her mother and other relatives in a refugee camp in Ramallah. When she left home Sunday, relatives thought she was going to her job at the Red Crescent emergency medical service.
"She left as usual, with a smile on her face, running as if she were flying," Idris' elderly mother Wasfia Idris said, sitting on the floor beneath pictures of Arafat.
Hours later, a woman set off a powerful 22-pound bomb, killing herself and an 81-year-old Israeli man and wounding more than a dozen people near the entrance to a shoe shop on a crowded Jerusalem street.
Palestinian security forces arrived at the simple, two-room Idris home in Ramallah's Amari refugee camp Tuesday night to inform the family that Wafa was the bomber — news her relatives accepted as they went into mourning.
Palestinians have carried out dozens of bombings against Israel in the 16 months of fighting, but Sunday's was the first carried out by a woman.
Israeli police have not released the identity of the bomber and said Wednesday they do not know whether she intended to blow herself up or had planned to plant the bomb and leave the scene. The Al Aqsa leaflet called the attack a "martyr operation," suggesting it was planned as a suicide attack.
The bombing was the latest in a series of deadly attacks in Jerusalem, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is considering a plan to intensify security and make it more difficult for Palestinians from the West Bank to enter the city.
Idris was the daughter of poor parents who left the Israeli town of Ramle when the first Israeli-Arab war broke out in 1948. The family ended up in Amari, a refugee camp of narrow alleyways where anger at Israel is widespread.
At their cramped concrete home, Idris' family described her as a cheerful but sometimes hot-tempered woman who had no overt ties to any militant groups. She was divorced, with no children.
When Idris did not return from work Sunday afternoon, the family began to call her cellular phone but got no answer. They said they had no idea that she was headed to Jerusalem with a bomb.
"If I knew that she was going there, I would have prevented her," her mother said.
As a paramedic who treated the Palestinian wounded in clashes with Israel soldiers, Idris had been hit three times by Israeli rubber bullets, her family said. Her sister-in-law, Wisam Idris, noticed a transformation in Wafa after Palestinian-Israeli violence broke out in September 2000.
"Usually when she came back from work, she would tell us stories about the injured people she had treated and she looked affected," Wisam Idris said. "She used to say 'If I die, I want to die as a martyr,"' a reference to those who die fighting Israel.
The Red Crescent did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment on the case.
In her wedding portrait, a pale Idris had long, chestnut curls of hair and a slight smile. After eight years, she and her husband divorced when it became clear she could not have children, relatives said.
A brothers run a taxi, supporting the extended family, but business has been extremely slow with the Palestinian economy in tatters.
On Wednesday, the family temporarily moved to a neighbor's house out of fear their home would be the target of an Israeli attack. Homes of suicide bombers are sometimes destroyed by Israeli forces.