A 23-year-old woman allegedly plotting a solo suicide attack against Israel for the Islamic State (IS) was surrounded by two dozen Palestinian Authority (PA) security officers and arrested while she was teaching the Quran in a West Bank mosque, Israeli news media reported May 26. 

The arrest took place May 9. A high-ranking PA security official told the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth that security officers arrested Alaa Bashir, who is from Qalqilya in the northern West Bank. Authorities said she was planning to blow herself up inside Israel using a self-made explosive belt.

The newspaper said an undisclosed senior PA source reported Bashir confessed to contacting IS operatives in Syria and the Gaza Strip via the internet using the Telegram instant messaging app. She underwent online training on manufacturing explosive devices, according to the source.

The official didn't specify when Bashir supposedly contacted IS, but said she had previously "expressed solidarity with al-Qaeda and the Salafist movement that operates in the Gaza Strip," the newspaper reported.