Hamas planned Tel Aviv bombing

Israeli security services say Hamas abandoned plans to attack Israel’s largest city at the last minute.

Izvor: Reuters

Tuesday, 10.04.2007.

09:39

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Hamas planned Tel Aviv bombing

There was no immediate comment from Hamas, an Islamist group that heads the Palestinian unity government. Hamas last carried out a bombing in Israel in 2004, one of 60 such attacks the group launched since a Palestinian uprising that began in 2000.

In a statement, the Shin Bet said a member of a Hamas cell in Qalqilya, a West Bank city near central Israel, drove a commercial vehicle laden with about 100 kg of explosives into the Tel Aviv region last month.

"But the attack was not carried out and the vehicle was returned to Qalqilya," the security service said, without elaborating, in a statement faxed to Reuters.

The vehicle later exploded in a "work accident" in Qalqilya, the Shin Bet said, using an Israeli term for a technical malfunction. The statement did not say if the blast caused any casualties.

Nineteen members of a Hamas cell in Qalqilya suspected of involvement in the planned bombing, timed for the Jewish Passover holiday, were arrested by Israeli security forces, the Shin Bet said. Their names were not released.

The Palestinian would-be suicide bomber, the Shin Bet said, was able to enter Israel through military checkpoints because he carried an Israeli identity card on the basis of his father's marriage to an Israeli Arab.

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