OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, September 18 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Following the murder of two Palestinians early Wednesday, September 18, a Palestinian resistance activist killed himself and an Israeli policeman at a bus stop in the northern Arab town of Umm el-Fahm, in the first bombing operation inside Israel in six weeks.

The martyr bomber detonated the device as police approached him, killing himself on the spot, public radio said.

A policeman also died in the blast and another two Israelis were wounded, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

A witness said on army radio that the bomber was blown to pieces in the blast near a police van.

"We were sitting in a restaurant and suddenly heard a huge explosion… The body of the man was completely destroyed. We were about 20 meters [yards] from the blast," an Arab Israeli witness told AFP.

The police spokesman said the bomber was apparently trying to board a bus heading further into Israel from Umm el-Fahm, which lies only 10 kilometers (six miles) from the West Bank town of Jenin that was reduced to rubble after a brutal Israeli offensive.

Government spokesman Avi Pazner laid the blame on what he described as the Palestinian Authority’s failure to crack down on resistance fighters.

"This is the result of the complete inaction of the Palestinian Authority" which he said is doing nothing to stop Palestinian resistance groups "sending their men to blow themselves up in Israel."

Pazner said the blast justified Israel's continued reoccupation of the West Bank which had "allowed us to stop the number of attacks being bigger."

It was the first time since August 4 that a Palestinian resistance activist has blown himself up inside Israel.

The latest resistance bombing operation came on the heels of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s speech in which he ordered an end to attacks on civilians inside Israel to mark the second anniversary of the Intifada against Israeli occupation. The call was rejected by all Palestinian resistance movements.

The operation came as violence continued in the occupied Palestinian territories, where two Palestinians were killed earlier Wednesday.

The Palestinian army shot dead a Palestinian in an army incursion, as another Palestinian, suspected of collaborating with the occupation army, was also found dead in a village near Jenin.

The latest deaths brought the toll since the start of the Palestinian Intifada to 2,501 people, including 1,844 Palestinians and 607 Israelis, the remainder being foreign nationals.

Meanwhile, Israel, one of the beneficiaries from a U.S. attack on Iraq (as it was from the September 11 attacks), started linking the 12-year-sanction-hit Arab state to terrorism, with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres painting Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden with the same brush as Iraqi President Saddam Hussein Wednesday, saying they must be vanquished "as soon as possible."

"The front from Bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is a menace to us all," Peres said in an address to the 57th U.N. General Assembly.

"It won't enable peace nor permit freedom. Neither to all people, not to their own people," he added.

Peres said the global community "cannot allow dark forces to posses weapons of mass destruction, aware of their whim to destroy the life of innocent people.

"We have to win. As soon as possible," he said.