JERUSALEM, 23 September 2004 — Two Israeli border policemen were killed and 17 other people wounded yesterday when a teenage Palestinian bomber blew herself up at a police checkpoint next to a group of bus stops in Jerusalem.

“A female bomber approached a checkpoint protecting several bus stops and blew herself up,” police spokesman Gil Kleiman said at the scene of the blast near the French Hill neighborhood of the city.

Kleiman confirmed that both Israeli victims were young members of a border police unit who had been manning the checkpoint in an area which has seen at least four attacks in the course of the Palestinian uprising.

One died instantly when he confronted the victim who then detonated around four kilograms of explosives hidden in a bag.

Medical sources later said the second Israeli had died in hospital.

An AFP correspondent reported seeing the severed head of the young female bomber who had been wearing a beige-colored headscarf. Her legs had been blown several meters away from the rest of her body.

The badly burned body of one guard could also be seen slumped over metal railings.

A spokesman for the Palestinian group, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, claimed responsibility for the attack.

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.

In brief comments to Israeli television after the attack, Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed that there would be no let-up in his government’s fight against militant groups.

“This attack is very serious and we will be forced to continue our fight against terrorism. There can be no compromise with terrorism,” 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.

International condemnation was led by Annan whose spokesman said that the UN chief “urges the Palestinian Authority to take all necessary measures to put an end to terror and to bring to justice the organizers of such heinous crimes”.

Sharon also renewed his threats against Arafat yesterday, insisting the Palestinian leader “would get what he deserves” as he recalled the fate of two assassinated leaders of the Hamas movement.