Families make rival claims to bombers

Mourners paying their respects at the Gaza home of Luay Laghwani this weekend are greeted by posters that celebrate his death as fervently as his life. His family, who believe the 22-year-old was one half of the two-man suicide bomb team that struck in Israel last week, are proud of the son they now call a martyr to the Palestinian cause.

Yet despite the tears of both grief and joy, it may well be that Luay Laghwani is still very much alive. In a macabre illustration of the celebrity status that suicide bombers acquire in Palestine, no fewer than four different families are claiming credit for the attack, which killed a 73-year-old woman and injured 11 other people.

In Gaza, the relatives of both Laghwani and his supposed accomplice, Moussa Arafat, have held lavish funerals and received hundreds of well-wishers thanking them for their role in the suicide operation, the first inside Israel for more than a year. (Telegraph)