The attacker's final note: 'How beautiful it is to kill and to be killed'

"This time, I hope I will be able to do it," Mohammed al-Ghoul wrote in a farewell note found yesterday after he had blown himself up on a bus in Jerusalem, killing 19 Israelis.

Al-Ghoul's letter, in which he said two previous attempts to mount an attack had been thwarted, is believed to have been written on Saturday. Afterwards he went to see relatives for the last time, taking them sweets. One of his sisters, Layla, said he seemed to be acting normally and relatives only realised later he must have been saying goodbye.

After the visits, al-Ghoul, 22, left his relatively well-off home in the al-Faraa camp. Relatives said they assumed he was going to An Najah University in nearby Nablus, where he was studying for a master's degree in Islamic studies, to prepare for exams.

In his note, al-Ghoul wrote: "How beautiful it is to make my bomb shrapnel kill the enemy. How beautiful it is to kill and to be killed – not to love death, but to struggle for life, to kill and be killed for the lives of the coming generation." Next to his name, he wrote "Izzedine al Qassam", the military wing of Hamas, the Islamic militant group that claimed responsibility for the attack. He did not explain why his previous efforts to mount an attack had failed.

At the al-Ghoul home, relatives received condolences yesterday. The bomber's sister Samar said: "My brother is a hero. I'm not sad." His father, Haza, said: "He's a martyr. We have only to ask our God to be merciful with him. Our sons want to die for our land, to get it back."

The attack was the 69th Palestinian suicide bombing in the 21 months of Israeli-Palestinian fighting.