A Palestinian suicide bomber has killed a woman in southern Israel in the first such attack in the country in over a year.

Police said they prevented a second blast in the shopping centre of the town of Dimona after shooting dead an accomplice before he could detonate his explosives belt.

Yossi Porianta, the police chief in Israel's southern Negev region, said: "The second terrorist was shot in the head as he tried to set off his bomb belt."

Israeli officials said the attack would not derail peace talks.

Hamas's armed wing said it was responsible for the Dimona bombing, the first such attack inside Israel claimed by the group since 2004

A Palestinian suicide bomber last struck in Israel on January 29, 2007, killing three people in the southern resort town of Eilat, on the Red Sea.

Elsewhere in the region, masked Palestinian gunmen and Egyptian forces exchanged fire at Gaza's border, injuring two Egyptian security force members.

The fighting erupted after Egyptian security men stopped the flow of Egyptians and Palestinians trying to return home. On January 23, Hamas Islamists blasted a hole in the cement border fence which allowed tens of thousands of Palestinians to stock up on supplies in defiance of an Israeli-led blockade of the coastal territory.

On Sunday, Egyptian forces used barbed wire and metal barricades to seal the only remaining gap on the Egyptian side of the frontier at Rafah, a town straddling the border.

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