The Islamic Jihad militant group claimed responsibility Friday for a suicide bombing in the West Bank that killed one soldier and two other Palestinians.

Islamic Jihad activists in the West Bank village of Atil, near Tul Karm, announced on loudspeakers that their bomber, Sohieb Ibrahim Yassin, 19, carried out Thursday's attack.

Army sources said the suicide bomber who killed an Israel Defense Forces officer and two Palestinians at an army checkpoint near Tul Karm Thursday was apparently planning to blow himself up at one of the many children's events taking place in Tel Aviv during this week's Hanukkah holiday.

Had the bomber not been stopped at the checkpoint, the attack would have been far more deadly, said the sources...

..."For every suicide bomber that succeeds, we have stopped dozens who did not reach their targets," said Colonel Aharon Haliba, commander of the Ephraim Brigade. "We've hurt them [the Jihad network] badly, but it still has an active infrastructure. There is no decline in the volume of its attacks."

"I don't want to speak of a miracle," he continued, "but with all my sorrow over Ori, I have to tell the truth: He and his soldiers, with their bodies, prevented [a far more serious] attack. That is their job; that is our job."

Binamo, who was laid to rest in Haifa on Friday morning, was considered an outstanding platoon commander. On Wednesday evening, just a day before the attack, his battalion commander had been asked to name his best platoon commander and unhesitatingly chose Binamo. "We have to convince him to remain in the army and become a company commander," the battalion commander said that evening.

Haliba said that the Palestinian Authority was also partly to blame for Thursday's attack, because "its security services are simply doing nothing."

Due to warnings of other attacks, the high alert along the seam between the West Bank and Israel will remain in force.