commit a suicide attack. Akhras first tried to join the ranks of Hamas, which turned her away because of a long-standing policy against allowing females to fight in physical combat. Hamas, which has claimed responsibility for many suicide bombings in Israel says that the basis for this rule lies in teachings of the Qur'an that says Jihad is the domain of the male. Despite this, Hamas and the Palestine Islamic Jihad (which generally also only recruits males) have since each used female suicide bombers. In 2002, the spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin made a statement to the press after Akhras' bombing saying that the group would only use women after they ran out of men. However, Akhras found a group that would accept her: the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a group linked to the armed branch of Fatah (Yasser Arafat's party), more secular than Hamas. The group already had experience, using at least three other women successfully in suicide bombings against Israel before Akhras. She was reportedly trained for several weeks before being sent to Kiryat Yovel, a south-western neighborhood of Jerusalem, to detonate in the supermarket. Before her attack, Akhras, like many other Palestinian suicide bombers, made a video in which she lashed out at the regimes and militaries of Muslim nations throughout the world. She said: "I say to the Arab leaders, stop sleeping. Stop failing to fulfill your duty. Shame on the Arab armies who are sitting and watching the girls of Palestine fight while they are asleep." Bombing and victims On March 29, 2002, Ayat al-Akhras was driven to the Kiryat HaYovel supermarket in Jerusalem by the recently recruited Tanzim member Ibrahim Sarahne, who had once worked in the supermarket. The neighborhood is home to a mostly young population, young couples, students at the Ein Kerem medical campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, professors and teachers. The two crossed an Israeli checkpoint with the bomb in a bag on the car floor at Akhras' feet. In the aftermath of the bombing, Sarahne said that during the drive he suggested that he just throw the bomb, which would allow her to return home. Yet, she replied 'I'm not afraid. I want to kill people.' Akhras detonated her explosives and killed two people: a 17-year-old Israeli girl named Rachel Levy and a 55-year-old security guard named Haim Smadar who had attempted to stop Akhras from entering