An Israeli woman has been killed by a bomber in a shopping centre in the southern Israeli town of Dimona.

A number of Palestinian factions, including the Fatah-affiliated al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, along with the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades and the United Resistance Brigades, have all claimed responsibility for Monday's bombing.

Police said they shot dead a second attacker before he had a chance to detonate his explosives belt.

The attack is the first bombing on Israeli soil in just over a year.

Just hours after the attack, three members of the Popular Resistance Committees were wounded in an Israeli air raid in the Gaza Strip.

In January last year, a Palestinian bomber blew himself up in a bakery in the Red Sea resort of Eilat, killing three people in the first such attack in nine months.

That attack was claimed by Islamic Jihad and al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

Responsibility claimed

An al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades statement said it carried out Monday's attack in Dimona jointly with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Brigades of United Resistance, a previously unknown group.

Reporting from the scene, David Chater, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Israel, said: "The police have moved people away because they are trying to take the explosive vest off one of the men."

He said Ehud Barak, Israel's defense minister, had visited the scene of the bombing.

Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin, speaking from Jerusalem, said there had been concerns in Israel that the recent border breach between Gaza and Egypt had made southern Israeli towns more vulnerable to attacks.

But al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed the bombers came from the West Bank and named them as Raji Hassan Al-Kilani and Ayman Ramzi Al-Hadadeen.

Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman, said Israeli authorities  were "studying the situation and are trying to verify from where the terrorists came".

'Glorious acts'

In Gaza, Ayman Taha, a Hamas spokesman, rejected suggestions that the bombing will hurt Hamas' chances of reopening Gaza's border with Egypt.

"The bombings were there before the closures and the resistance used every opportunity to make these glorious acts," he told the Associated Press news agency.

"They show the Palestinians can respond to the enemy and their crimes."

Mahmoud Habbash, minister of social affairs in the Ramallah-based Palestinian government, told Al Jazeera that he held Israel responsible for the "violence and escalation".

Jibril Rajoub, a member of Fatah's revolutionary council and a former senior security official, said the only way for Israel to prevent attacks was to make peace with the Palestinians.

He said: "We hope the Israelis will realize that the blockade, killings, raids and what is going on every day in Gaza Strip and the West Bank will not bring them security, peace or stability.

"The alternative to the blockade, bloodshed and violence is peace with the Palestinians."

Israeli pledge

The Israeli government vowed to "continue to fight terrorism by all necessary means".

"Terror organizations have again shown their true face ... they strike civilian population centers with the intention of killing innocent civilians," Arye Mekel, a foreign ministry spokesman, said.

Earlier on Monday, Israeli troops killed two fighters belonging to Islamic Jihad near the West Bank city of Jenin.

Islamic Jihad announced over loudspeakers that Ahmed Abu Zeid and Imad Zakarneh, its local leaders, were killed in the incident.

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Bomb aftermath